
of 
FIELD 

and 
WOOD. 

Villiam Everett Cram I 

M 



I 



» 



am 



m 

m 




.IBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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... Copyright Xo. 

Shelf.....,',.. 



ChafC— - Copyright No 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Little Beasts of Field and 
Wood 




T^E MINK AT HIS FISHING 



LITTLE BEASTS 
OF FIELD e^ WOOD 

William Everett Cram 




Boston 

Small, Maynard and Company 

1899 




Copyright) l8gq 
By Small, Maynard & Company 

( Incorporated ) 



45109 

T WO COPIES RECEIVED. 



I - 1 1883 





John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 






QL/fll 



TO 

CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT, M.D. 



Preface 

ALTHOUGH practically all the observations 
referred to in this book were made in New 
Hampshire, they will, perhaps, on the whole apply 
equally well to the wild creatures of eastern 
Massachusetts, and in a more general way to the 
whole of southern New England and New York, 
The region which I have chiefly prowled over for 
the last twenty years — a region, I may add, which 
two delightful books of New England tales have 
made, in a way, almost classic — is restricted to the 
very southeastern corner of the State, and in gen- 
eral character is decidedly not typical of New 
Hampshire, being simply a quiet rolling farming 
country, beautiful at all times, but hardly to be called 
striking or impressive. Its chief claim to beauty is, 
perhaps, the clearly marked quality of the landscape 
generally, divided as it is between open fields and 
pastures, and groves and forests of white pine and 

ix 



PREFACE 

hemlock in solid dark masses, which give it, particu- 
larly in winter^ a distinctive character not found in 
regions where the woods are of a more varied make- 
up. 

Ten years ago this region could boast a very re- 
spectable area of old growth forest, not the original 
uncleared primeval forest, to be sure, but the next 
best thing to it> straight, smooth-stemmed pines 
whose tops were one hundred feet or more above the 
earth ; and, between these, shorter hemlocks with 
dense, almost impenetrable foliage and sturdy trunks 
three or four feet in diameter which sheltered in 
their turn the coming generation of saplings spring- 
ing into life between the prostrate forms of a still 
older forest. 

But by far the larger part of these woods has 
b<een cleared since then, and that which remains un- 
touched seems somehow to have lost much of its fas- 
cinating wildness. Still as fast as the woods are 
cleared away new -ones are constantly springing up 
to take their place, so that the actual area covered 



PREFACE 

with trees has varied less than might be supposed, 
while the swamps remain practically unchanged. 

The swamps are evidently the basins of what 
were once ponds or small lakes. These have become 
filled with sediment or covered over with aquatic 
growths of one kind and another which in time at- 
tained sufficient thickness and stability to support, 
first, the bulrushes and alders spreading out from the 
shore, and, finally , for est s of willows and water-ash 
and maple. The tree-roots bound the whole together 
and penetrated downward into the water beneath, 
now steadily being filled up and confined to slowly 
diminishing channels and underground basins, which 
I believe are still in existence beneath many of our 
swamps to an extent not generally suspected. 

I know of one quite extensive swamp in this 
vicinity, drained at one end by a brook which for the 
first part of its course is roofed over or bridged by 
several feet of black loam, which breaks down here 
and there for a few yards, and reveals the silent 
course of the stream beneath. Although the water 

xi 



PREFACE 

looks to be only a few inches deep, the sides and bottom 
are certainly not well defined, if they exist at all. 

I had a practical demonstration of this last autumn 
when I attempted to step across on a fallen maple 
which had evidently been there longer than I had 
supposed. It crumbled beneath me, and I went down 
until the water reached my waist — but even then I 
had failed to touch bottom. By grasping a convenient 
sapling, I managed to get myself out without much 
difficulty. In doing so, I kicked out beneath the 
banks as far as my legs would reach without touch- 
ing anything more substantial than water-soaked 
roots and leaves, and further investigation along the 
same brook convinced me that the greater part of 
the swamp {which is several miles in extent) is still 
in the earlier stages of growth, while most of the 
other swamps in the vicinity are much farther 
advanced in the process of earth-making. 

The water courses of this region belong largely 
to one type. They have their sources in damp woods, 
among low-lying hills and pasture lands hardly fifty 

xii 



PREFACE 

feet above sea level. But they are lazy, easy- 
going little brooks that appear always to be seeking 
the longest route to their final destination, as if loath 
to exchange the fresh-water meadows and woodlands 
for the salt marshes, and fearful of losing their 
identity in the sea. The Squamscott River to the 
north, and the Merrimack to the south, are merely 
drawn on a larger scale, hardly differing, except in size, 
from the little brooks that feed them. 

I have watched the daily life of the wild creatures 
of this locality at all times of year impartially, cer- 
tainly having spent as much time in the woods in 
midwinter as at any other season. In describing the 
habits of the different species, I have endeavoured to 
give the sum total of what I have seen at different 
times, instead of trying to depict the life of any single 
individual of each species. 

In grouping my little beasts, I have followed " no 
law of God or man " beyond associating them as 
nearly as possible as they are most commonly found 
associated in their native state. I have begun with 

xiii 



PREFACE 

the hunters, the foxes firsts and then the weasels, 
but without including all the weasels in the chapter 
bearing that title : for the mink and otter I have 
classed with the swimmers, along with the muskrat ; 
while the skunk, which is also' a member of the 
weasel family, must wait, because of his habits of 
lethargy, to be classed with the raccoon, woodchuck, 
chipmunk, and the rest of the hibernators. For a 
future day, also, I have reserved the wild-mice, — 
the meadow-mouse, woodmouse, and jumping-mouse, as 
well as the little foreign pilferers of our store-houses and 
cupboards whose aspect probably terrorises a greater 
number of the members of our own species each year 
than all the bears and wild cats within our borders. 

^he bats, moles, and shrews must also wait their 
turn, together with the hares, and, in fact, all of the 
little warm-blooded furry things which are still to be 
found within the limits of a day s walk in this part 
of the country, but for which I have found no space 
in the present little book. 

Even as I now write, I have only to look up from 

xiv 



PREFACE 

my desk to see miles of pasture and woodland spread out 
beneath a blazing August sun that seems to penetrate 
to the very roots of the grass and the most secret 
nooks of the forest^ as if purposely to reveal anything 
in hiding there ; but I fail to catch even a glimpse of 
any of the little beasts ', though I know well enough 
that hundreds of them are included within the range 
of my vision. Only a few minutes ago I saw a 
woodchuck sitting in his doorway and a chipmunk 
playing about the roots of a maple ', and yesterday ', at 
about this time in the morning, a red fox stood for 
several moments at the edge of the corn, almost 
within gunshot of the house, and scrutinised me as 
inquisitively as I was scrutinising him. In all 
probability he is hiding at this moment somewhere 
beneath the shadow of the broad leaves of the corn, 
waiting, half alseep, for some unwary chicken to 
wander within his reach. 

For permission to reprint portions of certain chap- 
ters I am indebted to the kindness of the editors of 

XV 



PREFACE 

the New England Magazine and the Popular 
Science Monthly, — the greater part of the chapter 
on red squirrels, as well as portions of the chapters 
on the mink^ otter, and muskrat, having already been 
published in the New England- Magazine, while 
much of the weasel chapters appeared in the pages 
of the Popular Science Monthly. 

The remainder of the text and most of the illustra- 
tions are now printed for the first time. 

W. E. C, 

Hampton Falls, N. H. 
August 75, 18pp. 



xvi 



Contents 

CHAPTER I 

Page 

Little Beasts and How to Find Them . . 3 

CHAPTER II 
Foxes 25 

CHAPTER III 
Weasels . 65 

CHAPTER IV 
Swimmers 107 

CHAPTER V 
Swimmers Concluded 153 

CHAPTER VI 
Squirrels X o^ 

CHAPTER VII 

More Squirrels 229 

xvii 



List of Illustrations 



Page 
The Mink at his Fishing Frontispiece 

Tracks in the Snow , . „ 9 

Red Fox 24 

She Fox and Young 29 

Black or Silver Fox 47 

Gray Fox 59 

Ermine in Summer 64 

American Sable «, . 69 

Least Weasel 77 

Ermine in Winter 89 

Ermine in Spring (Showing Change from White to 

Brown) 95 

Mink in Summer 106 

Mink in Winter 113 

Otter 137 

Musquash or Muskrat ...".; 152 

xix 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

The Cabin of the Muskrat 161 

Startled . 194 

Gathering Maple Seeds . . 203 

Luncheon . . . . . 209 

Tapping the Maple . 217 

Gray Squirrels 228 

Black Variety of Gray Squirrel 241 

Flying Squirrels .. 247 

Flying Squirrel 255 



xx 



Little Beasts of Field and Wood 



Little Beasts of Field 
and Wood 




Chapter I 
Little Beasts and How to Find Them 

TO my thinking, the small beasts that still 
inhabit our woods have been altogether 
too much neglected by the student of nature, 
though really much nearer to us and much 
more easily comprehended than birds, when you 
have once succeeded in finding them. For that 
they are more difficult to observe than birds is 
undeniable. 

3 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

I am persuaded that most of us would be 
surprised to learn how many wild animals of 
the bigness of a cat and upwards pass their 
lives in the midst of cultivated districts without 
ever having been seen by men, to die at last of 
old age, their existence even unsuspected by the 
owners of the land they dwelt upon. 

In studying quadrupeds, the chief thing to 
bear in mind is that, with the exception of 
squirrels and woodchucks, and possibly one or 
two others, all of them have comparatively poor 
eyesight, at all events for daylight, and appar- 
ently not much better for twilight or darkness. 

But even with the best of eyes they could 
only see in one direction at a time, while the 
slightest screen of grass or foliage conceals every- 
thing beyond it. But with a sense of smell and 
hearing such as theirs, they are instantly aware 
of anything that takes place in their immediate 
vicinity, with the exception of the one point 
towards which the wind blows. And here is 

4 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

where better eyesight would often stand them 
in good stead, for eyes are more serviceable away 
from the wind than against it, and the wonder 
is that in all these generations of hunting and 
being hunted, their eyes have not reached a 
higher degree of perfection ; but perhaps any gain 
in that direction would mean a corresponding 
loss in the other senses, and so the least import- 
ant was sacrificed ; and it certainly seems to be 
true that in no living creature are all of these 
senses perfect. 

While the wind is at your back, you will only 
get the most unsatisfactory glimpses of any of 
the fox and weasel tribes; but with it in the 
opposite direction, you may study them at your 
leisure ; and to a certain degree this is true of all 
our wild animals. 

In one sense winter is the best time for study- 
ing them, for when the snow is in the right con- 
dition, you may follow the footsteps of all those 
that are abroad at that season, and see for your- 

5 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

self just how they have been spending their time. 
On snow that is twenty-four hours old you can 
hardly go a dozen rods without crossing the 
track of one creature or another, and of course 
they multiply each night so long as the weather 
is favourable, until in many places it becomes 
difficult to distinguish between them. Perhaps 
the best snow on which to study footprints is a 
good firm crust, not too slippery, with half an inch 
of fine snow spread on its surface. 

Snow that has been blown about a good deal, 
and then packed by the wind, takes the clearest 
imprints, showing the exact mould of the feet 
that made them ; but such tracks are apt to be 
shallow, often little more than scratches, and hard 
to see at a distance. If the crust is icy and the 
surface snow very light, most animals slip about 
on it more or less, often making it difficult to 
identify their tracks. Very light snow, if more 
than an inch or two in depth, falls back into 
the footprint just made, obliterating the outline 

6 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

of the foot and giving the impression of the 
track of a much larger animal. A damp snow is 
nearly always satisfactory for tracking, though 
decidedly unpleasant to walk in ; and it often 
happens that the clearest tracks will be found 
in snow that has been almost wasted away by 
the rains. 

For some reason or other, the first snow of the 
season usually shows few tracks upon its surface ; 
perhaps because the feet of the wild creatures have 
not become toughened against its chill, and they 
avoid moving about any more than is necessary. 
At all events, the number of tracks is apt to in- 
crease with each successive snow-storm until the 
last of the season, so that snow in the last of 
April is sure to present a perfect crisscross of 
tracks before it is many hours old, partly owing, 
no doubt, to the hibernating animals, who have 
nearly all waked up by that time. 

When snow is melting rapidly, it is easy to 
tell at a glance just how long each of the more 

7 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

recent tracks has been made ; but in cold weather 
it is somewhat more difficult. If the air is not 
utterly devoid of moisture, you can judge pretty 
closely by the size of the frost crystals formed 
at the edge of each footprint.. You may also, 
by taking up a handful of snow around it, tell 
something from the readiness with which it 
falls together, but this last method is likely to 
prove pretty wild guessing, with any but an 
old hunter or an Indian. In thick woods you 
must look for hemlock leaves or anything of 
the kind, and calculate from the comparative fre- 
quency with which they occur in the track and 
on the surrounding snow, and from the strength 
of the wind and the age of the snow, about how 
far you are behind your quarry. 

But above all things, you must have your eye 
in readiness to see that which you are not look- 
ing for, as on every track there is something for 
every few rods that can tell you conclusively 
what you wish to know, if you can only read 

8 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

it aright. It is simply the game played by the 
detective, and just as intensely fascinating when 
once you have learned the first few moves. For 
as the track grows fresher as you follow it, you 
must stop looking for it at your feet, but away in 
front of you, for the further you can discern it 
in its windings among the trees, the more pros- 
pect there is of coming upon the one that made 
it unawares, and with this in view the best track 
to follow is one that leads you towards the wind. 

The snow often reveals curious and interesting 
things that would otherwise escape notice. Some- 
times I have observed that practically all the 
freshly made tracks in a certain locality pointed 
the same way, — foxes, weasels, rabbits, squirrels, 
and partridges, all headed in the same direction 
without any apparent cause and independent of 
the season. 

The birds of prey in their hunting write the 
most entertaining histories of their successes and 
failures on its surface ; sometimes just the marks 

ii 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

made by the tips of their wing feathers several 
feet apart on the snow, while half-way between 
them a mouse track terminates abruptly, though 
much oftener the hunter plunges deep into the 
snow in its anxiety to secure its prey. 

Last winter I observed where a great horned- 
owl had dashed at a rabbit and, missing, gone 
sprawling along the snow-crust, helpless before 
the velocity of its charge, stripping the leaves 
from the ground laurel in its endeavours to check 
its speed, until finally brought to a full stop by 
the drooping boughs of a hemlock frozen into the 
snow. Whereupon it regained its feet and walked 
off a few yards before taking flight, while the 
rabbit bounded away to cover. 

The tracks of a pair of foxes hunting rabbits 
together make interesting reading, but when 
weasels have been the hunters, they generally 
leave such a muddle of intersecting tracks as to 
make it difficult to follow the course of events. 

Many people appear to take it for granted that 

12 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

the lives of wild animals, especially the rarer 
kinds and those that are persistently hunted, 
must be spent in practically unending terror. 
But judging from what I have seen, I doubt very 
much if even those that lead the most precarious 
lives suffer to any great extent from fear. For 
one thing, I am pretty thoroughly persuaded 
that even the wisest of them have no actual 
comprehension or fear of death, and only avoid 
danger instinctively. Most animals on finding 
one of their own kind dead in a trap will ex- 
amine it casually without exhibiting any marked 
symptoms of alarm, and will perhaps return later 
to be caught in the same trap, if nothing further 
arouses their suspicion. But let one of them be 
caught insecurely and escape, even if but slightly 
hurt, and that particular trap, or any other like 
it near by, will be strictly avoided for months^ or 
else carefully approached and sprung in such a 
way as to make it harmless. 

As to the danger that comes to them through 

J 3 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

being pursued by other beasts or birds, or by 
man, I should say, judging from my own obser- 
vations, that comparatively few of them experience 
more than two or three really narrow escapes in 
the course of a year. 

Of course this is only guess work, but may in 
part serve to correct what I believe to be a gener- 
ally false impression in the other direction. But 
I doubt if it matters very much to the creatures 
themselves whether these adventures are few or 
many. For danger that brings with it action 
and excitement is nearly always found to be, on 
the whole, enjoyable instead of the reverse, and 
must be doubly so when the knowledge and fear 
of death are lacking. 

When one animal finds itself pursued by an- 
other more powerful, it naturally puts forth all its 
energy in order to escape or defend itself; but I 
am unable to believe from what I have seen that 
in any case it ever enters its mind that the out- 
come can possibly prove serious. For it seems 

14 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

unlikely that any of them, however intelligent, 
can imagine, except in the vaguest way, anything 
beyond its own personal experience, and so at 
most can only dread a few bites or scratches more 
or less serious. And in times of excitement one 
never thinks of such things or feels them when 
they are inflicted, for that matter. And in the 
case of wild animals, the combat is apt to be short 
and sharp, and has usually terminated one way or 
the other before it is time for the pain to set in. 
That animals frequently escape after having been 
seized and more or less injured is undeniable, 
while a still larger number are wounded by shot, 
but these almost invariably heal with the most 
astonishing rapidity. I believe that nearly all 
wild animals forget absolutely whatever fear they 
may have felt immediately the danger is over, 
and never think of it again until a similar danger 
arises, for most of them will resume uncon- 
cernedly whatever they were doing as soon as 
they fancy themselves secure, and there is not a 

J 5 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

shadow of a doubt in my mind that the sensations 
of an animal fleeing from a hawk or fox, or even 
struggling in its grasp, are much the same as 
those of the foot-ball player or the fencer, neither 
of whom is exactly to be pitied. So that on the 
whole it seems safe to conclude that the life of 
our wild animals is happy in spite of occasional 
periods of hunger and thirst. Cold appears 
hardly to affect them at all, except when they are 
weakened by hunger ; and though ill-health is not 
by any means unknown among them, it would 
appear to be almost wholly confined to the vege- 
table-eaters whose food-supply is most abundant 
and easily procured. The flesh-eaters, probably 
owing to their more active lives, enjoy apparently 
unbroken health, though the habit most of them 
have of gorging themselves to the utmost extent 
of their capacity after a successful kill would 
ruin any ordinary digestion ; but probably their 
frequent periods of enforced fasting counteract 
the effects of over-eating. 

16 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

Hares, muskrats, gray squirrels, and chipmunks 
are perhaps the most frequent victims of disease ; 
while curiously enough woodchucks and skunks, 
which never take an unnecessary step, apparently, 
and are enormous eaters at all times, except when 
dormant in the winter, are astonishingly healthy. 
Few of the smaller animals seem to be greatly 
inconvenienced by the loss of a leg after the first 
few weeks. About the only noticeable change 
is that an animal with only three legs prefers to 
escape by hiding wherever it may happen to be, 
instead of running away, though when necessity 
requires it, such an one will nearly always be 
found capable of making as good time as its 
uninjured fellows. 

Although the majority of them are classed as 
nocturnal, there are very few of our little beasts 
that do not appreciate the sunlight sufficiently to 
seek out sunny nooks beneath stumps and ledges 
for their mid-day naps, even at mid-summer ; just 
as cats, which are probably about as nocturnal as 
2 17 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

any of them, are notoriously fond of sunning 
themselves on every occasion. 

And this I believe to be a pretty fair example 
of the pleasure they find in existence, life for them 
being evidently divided into but two stages, youth 
and extreme old age, without the intermediate 
period of work and responsibility and worry, 
which we of the present day are taught to look 
upon as the most important part of human life. 

For though there are plenty of hard workers 
among the rodents, at least, it seems to be work 
of a wholly irresponsible nature, done for the fun 
of the thing, as children build forts in the sand. 
And like children, too, they are certainly fond of 
pretending. With dead leaves and sticks for play- 
things some furry little chap will spend hours all 
alone under the shadows of the leaves, perfectly 
happy, and, to all outward appearances, just as 
deeply interested and as much in earnest as when 
engaged in gathering stores of food for the ensu- 
ing winter. 

18 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

And then they get such an immense amount 
of satisfaction from the simple matter of eating. 
Not like birds, most of whom swallow their food 
whole, and apparently only snatch what fleeting 
enjoyment they may from its passage down 
their throats, and the sense of fulness which 
follows, but like true gastronomers, tasting each 
morsel appreciatively, even if not much given to 
lingering over their meals, for the table manners 
of most of them are, to say the least, decidedly 
greedy. 

Just how much their personal comfort is affected 
by the weather is of course wholly a matter of 
conjecture; but I, for my own part at least, have 
often envied the smaller ones their lot. When 
tramping across windswept areas of country, 
without any adequate shelter from the gale for 
miles perhaps, I have been struck by the abun- 
dance of little sun-warmed nooks and hollows 
where a meadow-mouse, or a hare, or even a fox, 
might crouch out of the reach of the wind. And 

l 9 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

in summer, any bush or broad-leaved herb serves 
to protect them from the sun. Almost every- 
where, too, there are plenty of holes in the earth, 
or the decaying trunks of trees, where they can 
find shelter and where neither of the extremes of 
heat or cold can ever penetrate. 

I should say that by far the greater part of 
their discomfort is caused by drought and exces- 
sive rainfall or the sudden melting of snow. 
There are few sights more pathetic than that of 
some little animal whose fur was never meant 
to shed water for any length of time, swimming 
painfully about among rattling ice-cakes and 
sodden snow, with no more cheering prospect 
before it in the immediate future than that of 
climbing out into the still colder atmosphere, or 
squeezing itself away all wet in the damp interior 
of a floating log. The sudden overwhelming 
of a thunderstorm in summer, when undoubtedly 
many of them perish, seems desirable by contrast. 

Snow by itself is unquestionably a protection 

20 



LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM 

and benefit to practically all the lesser inhabi- 
tants of the woods, and only after it has become 
saturated with water does it become a menace 
to their welfare. 

It is hardly likely that the droughts we get in 
this part of the country ever very seriously affect 
any animal larger than a mole or chipmunk, 
though a few weeks without rain would prob- 
ably compel most of the others to seek out 
new places of abode. But this in itself is not 
by any means a matter of much consequence 
to any of them. For I believe that, contrary to 
general opinion, most of them are decidedly 
nomadic by preference, and forever wandering 
from place to place, even when hampered by 
families of helpless young ones. 



21 




X 

o 



Chapter II 
Foxes 

Red Fox — Black Fox — Gray Fox 

IN view of the extent to which the habits of 
foxes have been chronicled, almost since 
the dawn of history, it would seem somewhat 
presumptuous to attempt to add anything new. 
In fact, the sentence just written strikes me now 
as hackneyed and worn-out. 

But for all that, every encounter with the 
creature itself, at liberty and living out its own 
free life as it will, is bound to be a surprise and 
a revelation to the observer. Not but what the 
various accounts of fox habits are accurate enough 
so far as facts go, but all the literature on the 
subject, it seems to me, has failed signally to 
render the image of the fox as he really is. 

The common red fox of this country is larger 
and more wolfish than his cousin of the Old 

2 5 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

World. His fur is longer and more brightly 
coloured, and his nose less sharply pointed. 
Otherwise there seems to be no very striking 
difference. 

My first actual experience with foxes occurred 
when I was perhaps a dozen years old. I was 
climbing a thickly-wooded knoll one evening 
about sunset, when, on coming out into an 
opening among the young pines, I caught sight 
of a little yellowish-gray beast as it bolted down 
into the mouth of a newly made burrow. Sup- 
posing it to be a woodchuck or perhaps a 
rabbit, I let fly an arrow after it, and hurried 
toward the hole, and then stopped short in my 
tracks for very fear, because of a cry that issued 
from the shadow of the trees to one side. I 
had always been used to hearing the barking 
of foxes in the distance on still nights in the 
winter, but this was of so utterly different a 
character that I failed to associate the two sounds 
in the least. A harsh, vibrating screech, rising 

26 



FOXES 

and dying out in a kind of snarling wail, with 
a weird menacing- inflection towards the end, 
which for the moment scared me beyond any 
experience I had ever had. And it was getting 
dark, too, on the east side of the hill, and I had 
always been a little too fond of reading popular 
natural history to feel perfectly at ease under 
the circumstances, so I started for home, but 
failed to leave that horrible creature behind as 
I had hoped, for it still skulked along beside 
me, and its yell rose at regular intervals on the 
still air, sometimes almost in front. 

It was lighter in the more open timber on 
top of the hill, and here for the first time I 
obtained a sight of the enemy, following within 
half a gunshot. I was a good deal relieved to 
see that it was smaller than its voice had led 
me to anticipate. So I fired another arrow at 
it and ran back, causing it to retreat again to 
the cover of the young growth. But I was not 
to get rid of it so easily, for when I turned back 

27 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

again, it turned also and followed me to the foot 
of the hill, still yelling. Most wild animals are 
bold enough in defence of their young, and 
the fox is no exception ; but I have never since 
then seen one carry it to quite that degree 
of recklessness, though recklessness is beyond 
question one of the prominent traits of fox 
nature, and its wildness is, I am confident, the 
result of careful calculation, and not timidity. 

It is difficult to understand how so keen an 
observer as Thoreau should have seen so little 
of them. I recall but two or three places in all 
his writings where he mentions having seen one, 
and in one place he says, cc It is remarkable 
how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near 
the village, where they have been in the night, 
and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one 
oftener than once in eight or ten years." Now 
it is hardly likely that they are very much more 
abundant here at present than they were in Con- 
cord in Thoreau's day ; yet I remember four 

28 



o 

X 

> 
z 

D 

-< 

o 

c 
z 
o 




FOXES 

that I saw in 1898, in broad daylight, without 
counting those chased by dogs, and at least as 
many the year before, and I think perhaps that 
that is about an average, for most farmers inter- 
ested in such matters whom I have asked, can 
recall at least one or more that they have seen 
each season. 

Foxes possess in the highest degree the love 
of hunting, and under the excitement of the 
chase are apt to throw caution to the winds. 
The swallows drew my attention one morning 
to a fox creeping towards the barn under cover 
of a stone wall, and evidently intent on mischief. 
Presently he sprung over the wall at a hen that 
had strayed away from the yard, and the next 
instant both came hurtling toward me across 
the field, the hen cackling hysterically, and the 
fox bounding along after her in silence, with 
his yellow fur and bushy tail flashing in the 
sunlight. It was one of the most beautiful and 
really thrilling scenes I have ever witnessed, and 

31 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

I wonder now I had the heart to interrupt it. 
But I did, and chased the fox away, and then 
returned to the house for a gun, though without 
much idea of seeing anything more of the fox, 
who I supposed was miles away in the woods 
and still running. 

But he was not so badly scared as I had 
fancied, for on coming back with the gun I 
encountered him unexpectedly, close to the hen- 
yard fence, in the act of swinging the hen 
across his shoulders with its neck in his teeth. 
It was the regular thing for him to do of course, 
though this only made it all the more sur- 
prising in real life. And he did it so perfectly, 
too, — just as he is represented as doing in pic- 
ture-books^ and as if he had been in the habit 
of doing it every day of his life. 

I have never seen a more perfect personi- 
fication of justifiable pride and satisfaction over 
a successful kill than he exhibited, marching 
down the garden with the utmost deliberation, 

32 



FOXES 

as though time was of no consequence to him. 
And then I felt that it was my turn, for he 
was hardly forty yards away, and I sighted fairly 
at his shoulder; but just then my foot slipped 
on the grass and I sat down very suddenly, while 
the fox bolted off with his prize still over his 
shoulder. 

By the time I had regained my feet, he was 
ninety yards away or more ; but I sent the heavy 
shot spinning after him just for the moral effect 
it might have, and at least it caused him to drop 
the hen, and put on a fresh spurt of speed for 
the woods, which in the next instant swallowed 
him from sight. 

From what I have seen, I am inclined to think 
that the foxes get even more poultry than they 
have credit for, as they hunt at all hours of the 
day ; and wherever there is a field of corn in 
which chickens are allowed to wander, you can 
nearly always find fresh fox tracks in the soft 
earth, often almost under the farmer's windows. 
3 33 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

It is no very uncommon thing to see foxes 
trotting along at their ease across the meadows, 
either in summer or winter, and at all hours of 
the day, and their barking also is often heard in 
the daytime. I have seen one cross the field 
on a rainy afternoon in the spring within one 
hundred yards of my window, barking as he 
went, and occasionally pausing to sniff — for 
mice apparently — in the dead grass. 

Last June at about ten in the morning of one 
of the hottest, brightest days we had, I heard the 
crows cawing uneasily, and looking in their direc- 
tion I saw a large fox trotting lazily along about 
a quarter of a mile from the house, though from 
the direction he was taking he must have been 
much nearer a few minutes before. As he passed 
among the cattle, I noticed that each turned its 
head to look at him, but paid him no further 
attention. 

A little further on, he jumped the brook and 
stopped for a few seconds to nose about at the 

34 



FOXES 

edge of the water, or perhaps to drink, and then 
on again until out of sight. If he kept to the 
course he was following, he must have gone pretty 
nearly two miles before reaching the woods, but 
evidently from choice, for most of the time there 
were thick evergreen woods within a quarter of a 
mile or less on either side of him. 

On the 20th of last July I heard a general out- 
cry from the robins and thrushes among the 
sw r eet-fern and young pines in the pasture, and 
pushing toward the sound, caught a glimpse of a 
young fox evidently about to help himself to the 
contents of a brown thrush's nest just in front of 
his nose, containing three young birds nearly 
grown. At my approach he slipped away among 
the bushes, and I saw no more of him. The 
young birds crouched down in the nest in silence 
until I touched them, when one shrieked wildly 
and scrambled over the edge, and falling caught 
one foot in the fork of a twig and hung suspended, 
stopping its outcry immediately. When I re- 

35 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

placed it in the nest, it proceeded to clamber over 
the others and tumble out the other side, while 
the rest seemed to take it all as a matter of course, 
and refused to stir. 

Two days later as I turned the corner of a 
clump of young pines near there, I saw an old fox 
standing perfectly motionless, facing me not 
twenty yards away in the open, closely-cropped 
pasture without so much as a thistle to hide 
behind. It was then about five in the after- 
noon and the sun shone full on him as he 
stood on the further bank of a little brook that 
flowed between us. In that position he had the 
appearance of being of a very pale yellowish 
buff, the black on his legs not being at all 
noticeable, probably owing to the season. I was 
particularly struck at the time by the size of ears, 
which were erected to their utmost extent and 
appeared to come together over the top of his 
head almost to their tips. After we had eyed 
each other for a few moments, he swung round 

36 



FOXES 

and stood side to me, with his eyes still turned in 
my direction. In that bright sunlight his fur 
lighted up to a most brilliant red on his back and 
tail, and was so short and close as to give him a 
singularly lean appearance. 

Presently he turned and cantered slowly away 
with much of the movement of a trotting horse, 
slowly veering around toward me however, and 
coming back along the sheep-path to almost his 
original position. The birds were scolding him 
more or less all the time, and a song-sparrow that 
had alighted in the grass at no great distance 
seemed to catch his eye, for he at once crouched 
and attempted to crawl to within springing dis- 
tance, but without success ; then he sat down in 
the path and proceeded to scratch his ribs with 
his hind foot, after which he stood up and walked 
off along the sheep-path toward the woods, every 
now and then stopping to look back over his 
shoulder at me as if still in doubt as to my 
identity. Whenever his head was turned away 

37 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

1 followed, stopping instantly at the first sign of 
his looking back, and he failed to take alarm so 
long as he only saw me motionless. When he 
had reached the shadow of the pines, he trotted 
up the bank and sat down beside a tree to scruti- 
nise me ; I now intentionally moved my hand 
while he was looking, and instantly he was off, 
bounding through the underbrush at a tremen- 
dous rate. 

The next fox that I saw, or at any rate made 
a note of, was on the 23d of September. It had 
been showery all the morning, but at noon the 
sun came out calm and sultry. This fox was 
pursuing a gray squirrel by the edge of an or- 
chard ; he jumped over a stone wall within fifty 
yards of me, and stood looking in my direction 
for several seconds before taking alarm, and then 
turned and trotted away, while the squirrel ran 
along the fence and up the branch of an oak- 
tree. This was hardly one hundred and fifty 
yards from a farmhouse where men were at work 

38 



FOXES 

hammering on empty apple barrels ; and the 
fox when he started off ran directly toward them 
for some ways before turning aside among the 
trees. 

The foxes' den is usually an abandoned wood- 
chuck burrow in a sandy hillside. It is always 
enlarged and extended considerably so that the 
big pile of new earth thrown up before the 
entrance is sure to make it rather conspicuous. 
The old male, I am told, never enters it, except 
perhaps to carry food to the cubs ; his bed- 
room is in the open air, usually on a flat rock 
or ledge, though I have started them from their 
naps at mid-day on flat stumps in a clearing, 
among the blueberry bushes in a swamp, or be- 
neath the shelving bank of a stream. 

Last winter some hunters captured a fox in 
the hollow trunk of a large elm that stands alone 
in the meadows near here. The only opening 
was through a large hollow root, while inside 
was a space three or four feet in diameter reach- 

39 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

ing well up into the tree; and the hunters told 
me that to all appearances the fox had not taken 
refuge there from the dogs, but had gone in of 
his own accord, probably intending to pass the 
day there. I once noticed a peculiar-looking 
dark-coloured ball five or six inches in diameter 
.near the entrance of a fox burrow, and at first 
was at a loss as to its make-up. But on being 
knocked to pieces, it proved to consist of a num- 
ber of small animals rolled together so com- 
pactly as to be indistinguishable at first glance. 
I cannot recall exactly the kinds or number of 
creatures of which it was composed, but I know 
that there were a star-nosed mole, a long-tailed 
jumping-mouse, several meadow-mice, and, I 
think, a shrew, besides a black-and-white creep- 
ing warbler and two or three half-fledged birds 
evidently belonging to the same family, some 
bits of rabbit fur, and a toad. The young foxes 
had evidently been rolling it about in sport, and 
it certainly indicated an abundance of food at 

40 



FOXES 

the time. I have seen fox burrows where the 
ground for a considerable space on all sides was 
fairly carpeted with hen's feathers, and others 
where partly eaten muskrats and skunks were 
decidedly in evidence. 

Although foxes roam impartially over all sorts 
of country, high or low, forest or open, they 
have their established runways, as they are called, 
where the majority of them travel in going from 
place to place. 

These are not paths like the paths of deer 
and rabbits, but are in places a quarter of a 
mile or more in width, and conform to a certain 
extent to the relative position of farmhouses and 
bridges; for though fond of hunting by the edge 
of the water, foxes have a most decided aversion 
to wet feet, and, except in the winter, have be- 
come largely dependent on bridges for crossing 
even the smaller streams, and their runways 
seldom pass between houses that are not at 
least half a mile apart. The course of one of 

41 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

these passes within twenty or thirty rods of my 
window, and there are comparatively few nights 
in the year when at least one fox does not pass 
along it, and often half a dozen, judging from 
the tracks in the snow. But the fox is a good 
deal of a tramp, and sometimes for days together 
there will not be a fox track to be found for 
miles about. 

From what I can learn, fox-hunting, as it is 
practised in this part of the country, is^ a science 
that requires years of study to make it a success. 
And the novice, though his dogs are of the best, 
may not even get a shot for the first season or 
two. Different hunters probably follow different 
methods ; but I know one, at least, who bears the 
reputation of being the most successful in the 
region. I don't know how he manages it when 
the ground is bare, though he seems to be just as 
successful at such times. But when there is a 
good tracking snow, he follows the most promis- 
ing trail, examining it carefully from time to time, 

42 



FOXES 

until satisfied that he is near his quarry, when he 
makes a wide circuit, counting all the tracks he 
crosses in coming round to his former position; 
and if the one he is following is among them, he 
makes another circuit, and so on until he feels 
sure that the fox is inside his last circle. Then 
he calculates, from the general lay of the land and 
his knowledge of the ways of foxes, just what 
course this particular one will be most likely to 
take when started, and then for the first time 
allows his dogs to take the track, while he hurries 
to the position he has fixed upon. Sometimes 
he finds that while the fox he is after has passed 
out of his magic circle, another has entered it, or 
that both may be inside, which increases the 
interest. If, as is bound to happen at times, the 
fox starts off by some other than the expected 
course, the hunter must ascertain which way he 
is circling, for they seldom follow a direct course, 
and attempt to head him off at the nearest run- 
way in that direction. He tells me that in winter 

43 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

a favourite trick of the fox is to lead the hounds 
on to thin ice over deep water, and that dogs are 
often drowned in this manner. Although follow- 
ing a totally different style of hunting, and one 
which is tabooed in England and our own more 
southern States, he still entertains pfetty much 
the same feeling towards the object of his pursuit, 
looking upon it not as vermin to be destroyed on 
all occasions, but as game worthy of being pro- 
tected at proper seasons. Accordingly, he never 
allows his dogs to follow a she-fox during the 
latter part of the winter, and beyond a shadow of 
a doubt would suffer his last chicken to disappear 
rather than shoot one in the summer. The fox 
seems to have little instinctive fear of the dog, and 
it is not an uncommon thing to see them playing 
together in the pastures on the most friendly 
terms ; while there are very few dogs that dare 
to engage an old fox in single combat. Last 
spring I heard a hound baying on the track of a 
fox, and soon after saw him emerge from the 

44 



FOXES 

woods not far from me, accompanied by a large 
St. Bernard, who seemed to be decidedly new to 
the business of fox-hunting. The two crossed 
over a little bridge together and climbed up the 
path beyond among the pines. A little later the 
hounds voice stopped abruptly to be superseded 
by the shrill barking of a fox, and in another 
minute both dogs came hurrying back with the 
fox pursuing them. The latter stopped at the 
top of the bank overlooking the bridge, while 
the dogs crossed over, and then turned to look 
back at him. They acted at first exactly as if 
puzzled to know just what they ought to do about 
it, and then the hound took up the track again 
and started towards the fox, baying, while the fox 
slipped back out of sight in the shadow. 

But in a few minutes the performance was re- 
peated, the hound being driven back to where 
his companion stood waiting. And then they 
turned together and trotted away in an opposite 
direction, leaving the fox victorious. He stood 

45 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

at the top of the bank watching their retreat, 
and barking at intervals, until my approach drove 
him back into the woods. In all probability his 
family was near there, and he felt it his duty to 
protect it from invaders. 

It must add immensely to the fascination of 
fox-hunting to know that at any time you may 
draw that inestimable prize, a black or silver 
fox. This is now believed to be merely a variety 
of the common red fox, only with long black fur 
of an entirely different quality. The white- 
tipped over-hair varies in amount in different 
specimens, so that the colour varies from pale 
silvery gray to absolute black, and other things 
being equal, the darker the skin, the more valu- 
able it is. 

Although occasionally found wherever the 
red fox is abundant, it is everywhere decidedly 
rare ; and I cannot discover that an undoubted 
specimen has ever been killed hereabouts. But, 
a few years ago, all the hunters agreed that 

46 



FOXES 

there was one in the vicinity. Most of them 
claimed to have seen it ; and several to have shot 
at it, yet none of them succeeded in bagging it ; 
and after two seasons of such rumours it ceased 
to be talked about, probably having been driven 
out of the region. 

It seems remarkable that one fox should have 
been seen so frequently, yet most of the accounts 
appeared trustworthy enough ; and I myself, on 
two occasions, the first winter saw a fox that 
certainly looked quite black. It seems hardly 
likely that there should have been more than one 
black fox in the neighbourhood at the time ; 
unless, perhaps, they are in the habit of roaming 
about over. the country together, attracted by their 
similarity of colouring. 

Or if, as is said to be the case in most instances, 
they were born of red parents, there may have 
been several reared in this part of the country at 
that time, just as black lambs appear for some 
inexplicable cause among the flocks of a certain 
4 49 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

locality during the same season. Last year, for 
instance, nearly every flock near me had black or 
brown lambs, though no black or brown sheep had 
been known here for years. In our own flock 
were two black twin lambs. One of them had ordi- 
nary wool like the rest of the sheep, and from the 
first showed a slight shade of brown in certain 
lights, which increased during the summer to a 
decided brown at the surface; while the fleece of 
the other was nearly twice as long, and at first 
more nearly resembled fine silky hair than wool, 
and for several months was as absolutely black as 
anything well could be ; even now, it only shows 
a faint coppery tinge at the tips. 

Red lambs were also common last year, and in 
most instances exhibited the same peculiar quality 
of fleece ; but like the brown and some of the 
black ones, they faded out in course of time to 
resemble their mothers both in colour and in 
quality of wool. 

Is it possible that the birth of black and silver 

5° 



FOXES 

foxes is of the same nature as that of the black 
and brown lambs, and that they have the same 
tendency to grow paler as they grow older ? — for 
foxes are killed in all the varying shades and 
qualities of fur, from the black to the common 
red. One variety known by furriers as the cross 
fox has the fur of the ordinary colour, while the 
long over-hair is black, the points falling together 
on the shoulder in the pattern of a cross. 

My theory might be made to account for the 
fact that the black fox or foxes disappeared so 
quickly from the neighbourhood, without any 
having been taken by the hunters. 

The first one that I saw crossed the road about 
one hundred yards from me, and trotted along by 
the edge of a field on the snow-crust, giving me 
a good opportunity to observe him, sometimes 
against a background of dark pines, and at no 
time did he show any other colour than black, 
though the sun, which was near setting, was at my 
back all the time. A few weeks later, on coming 

5 1 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

out of some woods into the open, I saw a fox 
that looked quite black running before me up 
the hill-side ; he stopped for a moment to look 
back at me, and then disappeared round the hill. 
I followed his track in the snow, and found that 
he circled round to the woods I had just left, and 
from there he refused to be driven, though I fol- 
lowed his track until it crossed and recrossed so 
often as to be indecipherable, but I was only able 
to get the merest glimpse of him between the 
trees. When I saw him first, I was looking 
north, and, as it was nearly noon, the sun must 
have been at my back, though it may have been 
hidden by clouds at the time. Now every 
one is aware that an object on the snow looks a 
great deal darker than it really is, by contrast ; 
but I have never seen anything so light as a red 
fox look black, unless the sun was directly beyond 
it. All of the foxes that I have ever seen when 
the ground was bare have been of the ordinary 
kind ; but other persons appear to have been 

5 2 



FOXES 

more fortunate, and one of these told me that 
he saw a red and a black fox together. 

Every few years it is reported that a black or 
silver fox has been killed in one or another 
of the neighbouring towns ; but just what propor- 
tion of these reports is true I am unable to say. 

The gray fox is a wholly distinct species which 
does not intergrade with the others, being smaller 
and of decidedly different build. Its colour is 
dull yellowish gray, and it usually lacks the white 
tip on the tail so characteristic of the others. 
Although a southern species whose habitat is 
commonly given as cc Pennsylvania and south- 
ward/' it appears to possess the wandering habits 
of its tribe, and, unless I am very much mistaken, 
is not infrequently found much further north. I 
have received accounts of two foxes shot within a 
few miles of me recently, the description of which 
agreed perfectly with this species. The hunter 
that killed one of them supposed for a time that 
he had killed a genuine silver fox. 

S3 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

March 6, i8gg^ 8 p. m. A fox has been bark- 
ing, or squalling rather, at no great distance from 
the house, though in all probability he is farther 
away than he sounds, that being usually the case. 
I doubt if at any time he is less than a quarter of 
a mile away, though his voice sounds about as loud 
at that distance as the caterwauling of cats in the 
door-yard, which sound, in fact, it strikingly 
resembles at times, as if several foxes were fight- 
ing and snarling together. At other times it is 
simply a shrill snarl uttered at intervals of per- 
haps a minute, with occasional longer intervals ; 
finally he seemed to go off towards the southeast, 
still barking periodically. March /. It certainly 
seems as though the fox last night was barking at 
the approaching storm, as they are said to do, for 
though it was perfectly clear and calm at the 
time, before morning it was blowing a gale, with 
snow-squalls that rendered it impossible to see 
any distance, and it has been increasing ever since 
and bids fair to be a blizzard to be remembered. 

54 



FOXES 

We have experienced three memorable snow- 
storms this winter, and before each of them the 
owls and foxes hooted or barked in a wholly 
unusual manner, and before the first one, the 
celebrated November storm, the owls were flying 
about and hooting before the middle of the after- 
noon. Now I have never believed the barking 
of foxes or the hooting of owls to be a reliable 
forecast of stormy weather on every occasion ; but 
I am fully persuaded that animals are affected 
by the approach of a storm of unusual violence, 
and at such times are apt to utter cries unlike 
their ordinary ones. 

Before the storm set in last night, I heard the 
mice in the walls squeaking as I have not heard 
them before for months, as if they, too, like the 
foxes, were excited by its approach. 

The footprints of a fox rather resemble those 
of a small dog, and are ordinarily placed in a 
straight line, one directly in front of another, and 

55 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

perhaps ten inches apart in the line. Sometimes 
for short distances, and oftenest in very shallow 
snow, they are in pairs quite close together, and 
one slightly in advance, the pairs two or three 
feet apart. In deep snow they are sometimes in 
groups, separated by much longer intervals. 

The track of a large cat is sometimes mis- 
taken for that of a fox, but the separate foot- 
prints of the cat are always shorter and rounder, 
with the toes gathered together in front and a 
distinct pad behind, while the footprint of a 
fox appears to have been made by four pads of 
equal size, and shows distinctly the marks of the 
claws in front. And, moreover, the cat's tracks 
are generally nearer together, and are seldom in a 
straight line for any great distance. 

April </, 1899. When I awoke this morning I 
heard the barking of a fox not far away, and he 
continued to bark at intervals all the time I 
was dressing. On going to the door I saw him 

56 



FOXES 

about one hundred and fifty yards away, and at 
least fifty yards from the edge of the woods. 

He was apparently coming towards the house, 
but the opening of the door must have alarmed 
him, for he instantly became silent, and, turning, 
ran a little way towards the woods before stop- 
ping to look back at me, and then went loping off 
across the snow, keeping mostly in the shadow of 
the woods, though without actually entering them. 

The sky was perfectly clear and the sun at 
least an hour and a half high ; but though I 
was looking towards the east and saw the fox 
both in sunlight and shadow against a back- 
ground of snow, I failed to see that he looked 
much darker by contrast with the white surface, 
all of which helps to convince me that the one 
I saw three years ago was actually a black fox. 

But to go back to the gray fox. I have never 
had any opportunity for observing its habits when 
at liberty. Those who have, speak of it as the in- 

57 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

ferior of the red fox in every way, except perhaps 
in the matter of tree climbing, for which it appears 
to be rather better adapted than the other, 
though I am unable to learn that it ever does 
much more than take refuge among the lower 
branches when closely pursued, which is really 
no more than the red fox will do on occasion, 
though more rarely. 

In the open country the gray fox appears to be 
at a decided disadvantage. And even in those 
parts of the country where it was originally 
most abundant, it quickly disappears with the 
clearing away of the forest. 

That it is a most intelligent animal is beyond 
dispute ; but both in intelligence and general 
appearance, it seems to me from what I can 
gather to be a much more commonplace sort of 
little beast, to be classed with the woodchucks 
and hares, whose appearance in the woods and 
fields seems perfectly natural and hardly likely 
to attract especial attention. 

5* 




o 



O 






FOXES 

The sight of the more distinguished-looking 
red fox, on the contrary, with his long legs and 
brilliant colouring, always fills me with surprise in 
spite of myself, as if it were some strange creature 
escaped from confinement, and not just a com- 
mon fox, reared perhaps in my own pasture, and 
whose ancestors were dwelling here, for all that 
I know to the contrary, ages before my own 
crossed the seas. For although certain writers 
have tried to prove that ours is only a variation 
of the European red fox brought to this country 
by the first settlers, there seems to be but slight 
argument on their side. And I, for my part, shall 
always associate the red fox and the red Indian 
as co-inhabitants of the old forests that once 
stood here. 



61 




UJ 



Z 



Chapter III 
Weasels 

Ermine Weasel — American Sable — Least Weasel 

WHY is it that while popular fancy has 
attributed all sorts of uncanny and 
supernatural qualities to owls and cats, and no 
ghost story or tale of horrid murder has been 
considered quite complete without its rat peering 
from some dark corner, or spider with expanded 
legs suddenly spinning down from among the 
rafters, no such grewsome association has ever 
attached itself to the weasels, creatures whose 
every habit and characteristic would seem to sug- 
gest something of the sort ? Now, fond as I am 
of cats, I should never think of denying that they 
are uncanny creatures, to say the least. But, 
suppose it was the custom of our domestic tabbies 
to vanish abruptly, or even gradually on occasion, 
like the Cheshire cat after its interview with Alice; 
5 . 65 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

that would at least furnish some excuse for the 
general prejudice against them, but would really 
be no more than some of our commonest weasels 
do whenever it serves their purpose. I remem- 
ber one summer afternoon I was trout-fishing 
along a little brook that ran between pine-cov- 
ered hills. As I lay stretched on the bank at the 
foot of a great maple I saw a weasel run along 
in the brush fence some distance away. A few 
seconds later he was standing on the exposed root 
of the tree hardly a yard from my eyes. I lay 
motionless and examined the beautiful creature 
minutely, till suddenly I found myself staring at 
the smooth greenish gray root of the maple with 
no weasel in sight. Judging from my own expe- 
rience, I should say that this is the usual ter- 
mination of any chance observations of either 
weasels or minks. 

Occasionally they may be seen to dart into 
the bushes or behind some log or projecting 
bank, but much more frequently they vanish 

66 



WEASELS 

with a suddenness that defies the keenest eye- 
sight. 

In all probability this vanishing is accomplished 
by extreme rapidity of motion, but if this is the 
case then the creature succeeds in. doing some- 
thing utterly impossible to any other warm- 
blooded animal of its size. Mice, squirrels, and 
some of the smaller birds are all of them swift 
enough at times, but except in the case of the 
humming-bird none of them, I believe, succeeds in 
accomplishing the result achieved by the weasels. 
The humming-bird, in spite of its small size, 
leaves us a pretty definite impression of the 
direction it has taken when it darts away; but 
when a mink, half a yard in length and weighing 
several pounds, stands motionless before one with 
his dark coat conspicuous against almost any 
background, and the next instant is gone without 
a rustle or the tremor of a blade of grass, it leaves 
one with an impression of witchcraft difficult to 
dispel, and best appreciated when one has seen for 

67 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

one's self. Nor is the everyday life of the weasel 
quiet or commonplace ; his one object in life 
apparently is to kill, first to appease his hunger, 
then to satisfy his thirst for warm blood, and after 
that for the mere joy of killing. 

The few opportunities I have had for observing 
these animals have never shown them occupied in 
any other way, nor can any hint of anything dif- 
ferent be gained from the various writers on the 
subject, while accounts of their attacking and even 
killing human beings in a kind of blind fury are 
too numerous and apparently too well authenti- 
cated to be entirely ignored. These attacks are 
said usually to be made by a number of weasels 
acting in concert, and the motive would appear to 
be revenge for some injury done to one of their 
number. There seems to be something peculiar 
about the entire family of weasels. The Amer- 
ican sable or pine marten is said to have strange 
ways that have puzzled naturalists and hunters 
for years. In the wilderness no amount of trap- 

68 



> 

2 



o 

> 

z 

> 

03 




WEASELS 

ping has any effect on their numbers, nor do they 
show any especial fear of man or his works, occa- 
sionally even coming into lumber camps at night, 
and being especially fond of old logging roads 
and woods that have been swept by fire ; but at 
the slightest hint of approaching civilisation they 
disappear, not gradually, but at once and forever, 
and the woods know them no more. If there is 
anything in the theory of the survival of the fit- 
test, why is it that not one marten has discovered 
that, like other animals of its size, it could man- 
age to live comfortably enough in the vicinity of 
man? The mink and otter still follow the course 
of every brook and river and manage to avoid the 
keen eyes of the duck hunter, while for six 
months in the year their paths are sprinkled with 
steel traps set either especially for them or for 
the more plebeian muskrat. If a pair of sables 
could be persuaded to take up their quarters in 
some parts of New England, they could travel for 
dozens of miles through dark evergreen woods 

7 1 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

with hollow and decaying trees in abundance., 
and at present there are almost no traps set in a 
manner that need disturb creatures of their habits. 
Partridges, rabbits, and squirrels, which form their 
principal food, are nearly if not quite as abundant 
as before the country was settled, so that it would 
certainly not require any very decided change of 
habits to enable them to exist ; but evidently the 
root of the matter goes deeper than that, and, like 
some tribes of Indians, it is impossible for them 
to multiply or flourish except in the primeval 
forest. 

The common weasel or ermine, which is the 
the only kind I have seen hereabouts, would 
seem to have everything on its side in the 
struggle for existence, and when one happens 
to be killed by some larger inhabitant of the 
woods it must be due entirely to its own care- 
lessness. Nevertheless, they do occasionally fall 
victims to owls and foxes, and I once shot a red- 
tailed hawk that was in the act of devouring one. 

72 



WEASELS 

Still, these casualties among weasels are probably 
few and far between. Fortunately, however, they 
never increase to any great extent. Occasionallv 
in the winter the snow for miles will be covered 
with their tracks, all made in a single night, and 
then for weeks not a track is to be seen ; but 
usually they prefer to hunt alone, each having 
its beat, a mile or more in length, over which it 
travels back and forth throughout the season, 
passing any given point at intervals of two or 
three days. This habit of keeping to the same 
route instead of wandering at random about the 
woods is characteristic of the family, the length 
of the route depending to a certain extent on the 
size of the animal. The mink is usually about 
a week in going his rounds, and may cover a 
dozen miles in that time, while the otter is gen- 
erally gone a fortnight or three weeks. When 
it is possible, the ermine prefers to follow the 
course of old tumble-down stone walls, and lays 
its course accordingly. In favourable districts he 

73 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

is able to keep to these for miles together, 
squeezing into the smallest crevices in pursuit 
of mice or chipmunks. All the weasels travel 
in a similar manner — that is, by a series of leaps 
or bounds in such a way that the hind feet strike 
exactly in the prints made by the fore-paws, so 
that the tracks left in the snow are peculiar and 
bear a strong family resemblance. On soft snow 
the slender body of the ermine leaves its imprint 
extending from one pair of footprints to the 
next, and as these are from four to six feet apart, 
or even more, the impression left in the snow is 
like the track of some extremely long and slen- 
der serpent with pairs of short legs at intervals 
along its body. I have said that the ermine is 
the only weasel I have found in this vicinity, but 
this is not strictly true. One winter I repeat- 
edly noticed the tracks of an exceedingly large 
weasel — they were so very large, in fact, that 
I was almost forced to believe that they were 
those of a mink. The impression of its body in 

74 



WEASELS 

the snow was quite as large as that made by a 
small mink, but the footprints themselves were 
smaller, and the creature appeared to avoid the 
water in a manner quite at variance with the well- 
known habits of its more amphibious cousin, 
while, unlike the common weasel, it never fol- 
lowed stone walls or fences. I put my entire 
mind to the capture of the little beast, and set 
dozens of traps, but it was well along in the 
month of March before I succeeded. It proved 
to be a typical specimen of the Western long- 
tailed weasel, though I can find no account of any 
other having been taken east of the Mississippi. 
Its entire length was about eighteen inches ; fhe 
tail, which was a little over six, gave the effect 
at first glance of being tipped with gray instead 
of black, but a closer inspection showed that the 
' black hairs were confined to the very extremity 
and were partly concealed by the overlying white 
ones ; the rest of the fur was white, with a slight 
reddish tinge, and much longer and coarser than 

75 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

that of an ermine. Since then I have occa- 
sionally seen similar tracks, but have not suc- 
ceeded in capturing a second specimen. In all 
probability the least weasel is also to be found 
here if one has the patience to search carefully 
enough ; none, however, has come under my 
observation as yet. All the small weasels that I 
have seen have proved on close inspection to be 
young ermines with thickly furred black-tipped 
tails ; in the least weasel the tail is thinly covered 
with short hair and without any black whatever. 
Late in the autumn or early in the winter the 
ermine changes from reddish brown to white, 
sometimes slightly washed with greenish yellow 
or cream colour, and again as brilliantly white as 
anything in Nature or art ; the end of the tail, 
however, remains intensely black, and at first 
thought might be supposed to make the animal 
conspicuous on the white background of snow, 
but in reality has just the opposite effect. Place 
an ermine on new-fallen snow in such a way that 

76 



WEASELS 

it casts no shadow, and you will find that the 
black point holds your eye in spite of yourself, 
and that at a little distance it is quite impossible 
to follow the outline of the weasel itself. Cover 
the tail with snow, and you can begin to make 
out the position of the rest of the animal ; but 
as long as the tip of the tail is in sight you see 
that and that only. The ptarmigan and northern 
hare also retain some spot or point of dark colour 
when they take on their winter dress, and these 
dark points undoubtedly serve the same purpose 
as in the case of the ermine. 

I base my statement that weasels ordinarily 
travel by a series of leaps wholly on the appear- 
ance of their tracks, being unable to imagine any 
other mode of progression that could produce 
them. But at the same time I am bound to 
confess that I have never seen one moving in 
that manner. In fact I have only seen three or 
four living specimens in all, and these only for 
a few seconds at a time at most, and they seemed 

79 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

to glide along rather, with unarched backs, like 
serpents, and invariably vanished for good and 
all before going many feet. 

I remember that before I had formed any very 
definite impression of the nature of a weasel, 
I was informed by another boy of about my own 
age, that a weasel had three pairs of legs, which 
may have been his way of accounting for their 
peculiar manner of running, for he claimed to 
have chased and killed two that morning. 

Yesterday , March 12^ l8pp, I found an ermine 
caught in a box-trap which I had set for the 
purpose, hoping to keep one in confinement 
during the spring months in order to observe 
closely the change from white to red which 
occurs each spring. 

On first looking into the trap I supposed it 
to be empty ; but opening it pretty wide, I dis- 
covered a weasel crouched in one corner and 
partly hidden behind the rabbit's head which 

80 



WEASELS 

had served to entice it into the trap, and I con- 
fess that, judging from past experiences, I half 
expected that it would vanish on the instant and 
leave me with the empty trap in my hands. But 
this one made no attempt even to escape by 
darting out of the opening, though a red squirrel 
or even a chipmunk would hardly have let such 
an opportunity slip. So I closed the trap hur- 
riedly and carried it to the house, where I trans- 
ferred my prisoner to a cage where it could be 
observed more satisfactorily. 

It proved to be a female, and her fur looked 
as white and thick as that of a mid-winter 
specimen. What chiefly surprised me was her 
quietness and apparent docility, there being no 
exhibition of fear on her part at any time, 
though her big black eyes occasionally took on 
an expression of alarm at some sudden and unac- 
customed noise or movement of the cage. 

Whenever I touched the cage, she would ap- 
proach as if to examine my hand, but without 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

attempting to bite it, seldom making any rapid 
or impetuous movement, but moving in a lithe, 
serpentine manner, sometimes with arched back, 
and at others with her body held nearly straight 
and close to the floor of the cage. 

Almost any other of our small animals under 
similar circumstances would have flown at the 
sides of the cage, breaking either its teeth or the 
wires in its endeavours to force an opening. But 
the only effort of the kind that I witnessed was 
after she had been confined for several hours, 
when I found her trying her teeth on the wires 
in a most careful and business-like manner, but 
without much apparent enthusiasm. At my ap- 
proach, she promptly desisted, appearing to dis- 
miss the project entirely from her mind, though, 
as subsequent events proved, not wholly giving 
over her plans for escape by any means. 

Being desirous of observing her manner -of 
eating, I took my gun and went into the woods, 
and was lucky enough to start a gray rabbit 

82 



WEASELS 

within a few minutes' walk of the house, and get 
back with it while it was still warm. Cutting off 
its head, I tried to push it through the door of 
the cage, which, however, proved a little too 
small. But my weasel showed not the slightest 
hesitation about coming to my assistance, but, 
seizing it wherever she could most conveniently, 
she tugged and shook it until, between us, we 
managed to get it through. 

Then after dragging it to the middle of the 
cage she returned to lap up the blood spilled 
near the entrance ; after which she drank that 
which nearly filled one of the ears as it lay with 
the concave side uppermost ; then she turned her 
attention to the large veins of the neck, appear- 
ing to suck them dry before turning away. 

By the time she had "carefully licked off all 
the scattered drops from the rabbit's fur, and 
tasted a little of the spinal-cord where it projected 
from the vertebrae of the neck, she seemed to 
have pretty well satisfied her hunger, though 

83 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

she did make one half-hearted attempt to gnaw 
into the brain at the base of the skull, soon 
pausing, however, to yawn widely and lick her 
chops like a cat ; and I noticed that throughout 
the entire meal she had somehow managed to 
keep herself surprisingly clean and dry, carrying 
her tail cross-wise over her back or shoulders, 
as if to keep it off the floor of the. cage, which 
had become uncomfortably wet through the 
upsetting of her dish of water while we were 
struggling with the rabbit's head. 

She now began to exhibit a desire for sleep, 
crouching on a dry spot with her chin and throat 
resting on the floor and her eyes half closed, 
but without showing signs of curling up, as most 
small animals do when about to go to sleep. 

Remembering the very common belief that 
weasels and hares sleep with their eyes open, I 
watched her for some time in silence ; and it is 
true that I did not see her eyes close, except to 
wink, at any time, and though to all appearances 

84 



WEASELS 

asleep, she always raised her head instantly at 
my slightest movement. Still, the test was hardly 
sufficient to prove the correctness of the saying. 

I now opened the door into the other part of 
the cage, which was smaller and filled with dry 
grass for a bed. After a cautious scrutiny of 
the entrance, she went in and began vigorously 
rearranging the grass to suit her taste. So I 
left her to enjoy her nap in peace, but a few 
minutes later was startled by a strange and rapid 
knocking from the direction of the cage, and 
going to see what was the matter, found her 
endeavouring to carry the rabbit's head into her 
sleeping apartment, probably realising that al- 
though she was unable to eat any more just 
then, she was likely to wake up at any time and 
feel hungry, and determining to have her break- 
fast within reach, and not be dependent on my 
tender mercies for the future. But the doorway 
to her chamber was altogether too narrow ; and 
here she exhibited the first real signs of being 

85 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

possessed of a temper, apparently being pro- 
voked beyond all endurance by her repeated 
failures. 

Fearing that she might finally succeed, I got a 
good stiff wire with the end bent up into a hook, 
and getting a firm hold on the rabbit's head, 
pulled in an opposite direction, and was surprised 
at the strength exhibited by the slim little beast. 

Just as often as I succeeded in dragging it 
half-way across the cage, she would come whisk- 
ing after it, and, twisting loose the wire, go 
staggering back in triumph with her prize ; and 
when I at last got it as far as the doorway, 
where I could grasp it with my fingers, she still 
struggled with it, sometimes even touching my 
fingers with her nose, but never offering to bite 
them ; though I was rather more careless than 
was perhaps wise, for a weasel bite is said some- 
times to prove rather serious. Realising at last 
that she was struggling against odds too heavy 
for her, she concluded to abandon the uneven 

86 



WEASELS 

contest, and retired to resume her slumbers ; and 
I saw no more of her for the day. 

This morning we found the two cats sitting 
beside the cage, which they had evidently been 
dragging about in the night in their endeavours 
to get at the inmate, who was peering from the 
door of her chamber, evidently not greatly 
alarmed by the episode. 

When the cats had been driven away, she 
withdrew her head and spent the rest of the 
morning apparently curled up in her nest, refus- 
ing to come out, though I held tempting bits at 
the entrance of the cage and squeaked like a 
mouse to attract her attention. 

When I poked her with a spear of grass, she 
refused to stir or take any notice of me, only 
once uttering a sharp chip like the alarm notes 
of certain species of warblers. This was the only 
noise she made, except to hiss softly while 
struggling with me for the possession of her be- 
loved rabbit-head. 

87 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

Soon after noon, I found the cage empty, with 
an opening of about her size forced between the 
wires at the spot where she had made her first 
attempt at escape. And as nothing is to be 
found of her, I am forced to conclude that she 
made her exit from the room through a mouse- 
hole in the bottom of a cupboard, and is now in 
all probability chasing the mice somewhere about 
the walls of the house. 

To-day, I caught a large male ermine in a rat- 
trap, and, like the last, its fur was as thick and 
white as in mid-winter. 

And for my part, I have never seen one 
between November and April that showed more 
than a faint greenish or creamy tint, and this 
only on the under surface. And I have taken 
probably a dozen winter specimens at one time 
and another. And unless my memory is very 
much at fault, this includes one perfectly white 
specimen taken in November, before we had 

88 



WEASELS 

had any snow whatever. An ermine under such 
circumstances must find its white coat undesirably 
conspicuous ; but I have never so much as caught 
a glimpse of one at such times, though we often 
have whole weeks together, even in mid-winter, 
when the woods are practically free from snow. 

Yet the change to white seems to be as com- 
plete here, and of almost the same duration, as 
about Hudson's Bay, for example ; though only 
about two hundred miles to the south of us they 
are said seldom to turn white at all. 

And this peculiarity seems to be just as clearly 
defined geographically in the Old World, — in 
Scotland, for instance, the change is said to be 
complete ; while in England, especially in the 
more southern districts, white specimens are of 
rare occurrence, though piebald and parti-coloured 
specimens are not uncommon in winter. 

And now to go back to the long-tailed weasel. 
The different works which I have consulted 
agree in placing the eastern limit of this species at 

9i 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

Minnesota or thereabouts ; but Thoreau 5 under 
date of February 22, 1855, writes: 

" T. Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he 
caught in a trap three or four weeks ago. 

" They are not very uncommon about his 
barns. All white but the tip of the tail. Two 
conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw. 

" In summer they are distinguished from the red 
weasel, which is a little smaller, by the length of 
their tails, particularly, six or more inches, while 
the red ones are not more than two inches long." 

Now this description, especially as regards the 
conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw, and the 
length of the tail, applies perfectly to the long- 
tailed weasel and not to the ermine, the length of 
whose tail is invariably given as three or four 
inches. Still it seems hardly likely that this 
family of weasels should have inhabited this part 
of New England all these years without having 
been catalogued before ; but one hardly knows 
what else to think under the circumstances. 

92 



WEASELS 

It is surprising how rapidly the ermine changes 
from white to brown after the process is once 
begun; one that I caught in a trap recently 
showed the transformation nearly complete, the 
back being of a peculiar shade of reddish buff 
with only one or two little spots of pure white 
fur, while the sides were thickly sprinkled with 
long white hairs, which were already detached from 
the skin and constantly shedding. The tail was 
divided into three distinct sections of colour, black 
at the tip for about an inch, as in winter, then 
white for the same distance, and brown next the 
body. The white of the tail was confined to 
the long coarse hairs overlying the soft under- 
fur, which was already brown. The feet were 
still white, like the under surface of the body 
and throat, which remain so throughout the 
season. It was then the 14th of April, and only 
two or three weeks ago those that I caught 
showed no sign of changing colour. The new 
brown fur must have grown out with great 

93 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

rapidity, for it was already about as long as it ever 
would be. 

In fact, I am not yet fully convinced that it 
was new fur, but rather the old under- fur of the 
last winter turned brown, and that only .the long 
over-hair is shed in the spring. The more 
carefully I examined the fur of the specimen 
before me, the more I was persuaded that this 
was actually the case, and that the ermine habit- 
ually goes about with only its under-fur on dur- 
ing the spring and early summer, and that this is 
shed late in the summer, to give place to a new 
coat of short hair, which grows longer and is 
re-enforced by thick under-fur in the autumn ; 
while the whole turns white in November, 
through some inexplicable process which works 
alike with weasel and northern hare and ptarmi- 
gan, while the coats of other animals remain prac- 
tically unchanged as far as colour is concerned. 

The nursery where the young weasels are 
raised is, in most instances, beneath a stump, or 

94 



WEASELS 

in the burrow of a chipmunk, probably enlarged 
and remodelled to some extent; though it is 
doubtful if weasels of any kind ever dig entirely 
new burrows, — an undertaking that would hardly 
seem called for anyway in most sections of 
country, in view of the general abundance of 
chipmunks; for not only is the chipmunk's home 
perfectly adapted to the weasel's purpose, but 
the rightful owners themselves when caught at 
home serve to furnish the newcomers with their 
favourite food. 

I recall one instance where an ermine was 
caught in a trap set in the mouth of a wood- 
chuck's burrow, and although he may only have 
been poking about in search of mice or rabbits, 
which frequently take up their abode in bur- 
rows which the woodchucks have abandoned, it 
seems quite as probable that the ermine itself 
had its home there, for in Europe they are said 
often to inhabit rabbit warrens, and even the 
underground tunnels of the mole, — so that one 
7 97 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

would suppose that a creature so easily suited 
would find little trouble in obtaining lodgings in 
any part of this country where burrowing animals 
of one kind and another are so abundant. 

From what little I have seen of them, I should 
certainly never credit ermines with being possessed 
of a frolicsome disposition. But they are said, 
on good authority, to engage frequently in the 
most grotesque antics and gambollings, apparently 
for their own amusement, though sometimes 
even approaching their prey in that manner, as 
if to allay any suspicion of their evil intention, 
or possibly in the hope that curiosity may tempt 
their quarry within reach. 

A common habit with them seems to be that of 
storing up the dead bodies of their victims, after 
having satisfied their immediate appetites. Dozens 
of mice and young rabbits and the like some- 
times have been found packed away in weasels' 
dens, something which would account for the fact 
that while following weasel-tracks about the woods 

98 



WEASELS 

where they have been hunting, one almost never 
comes across any of the remains of the creatures 
they have killed, though these are often so much 
larger than the weasels themselves. For while all 
weasels undoubtedly live largely upon mice, they 
seldom appear to exhibit much hesitation about 
attacking larger game. 

It is easy to imagine the ermine starting out 
on his hunting trips, moving by leisurely, silent 
bounds over the pine-needles, ready for anything 
that may turn up. Judging from what I have ' 
seen, I should say that he depended largely upon 
his tireless muscles for success, together with the 
fact that few creatures are able to find refuge in 
quarters too narrow for him to follow. 

I have known gray rabbits when pursued by 
ermines to leave the woods and rush frantically 
out into the open fields, as if aware that their 
enemy was even better suited than themselves for 
rapid progress through the thicket and brambles 
which the rabbit usually- looks upon as its chief 

99 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

protection. And it seems as though it knew what 
it was about in seeking the open at such times, 
as I have never known the ermine to leave the 
woods in order to follow it, though really much 
more a creature of the open fields than the other. 

The ermine is particularly fond of white-footed 
mice, and in winter kills large numbers of them 
about the stone w 7 alls and rotten stumps where 
the mice have their homes. The chase must be 
a very exciting one, for the woodmouse is scarcely 
inferior to the weasel itself in leaping powers, be- 
sides being a most skilful and erratic dodger, as 
any one who has ever tried to corner one will 
bear witness. The slow, fat-bodied meadow-mice 
should prove much easier victims; but I have 
seen but little evidence that the ermine depends 
on them, to any great extent, for food. 

In many places the ermine is said to frequent 
barns and farm buildings, living on mice and rats 
and, incidentally, on chickens as well. But those 
that I have studied have been almost without ex- 

100 



WEASELS 

ception dwellers of woodlands and rocky pastures 
and brier-grown roadsides. The chief service that 
they can claim credit for is the destruction of 
wild mice, and their worst crime the murder of 
partridges and song-birds. 

In summer they catch insects and reptiles, and 
rob birds' nests by the dozen, and have even been 
seen to spring into the air and catch birds on the 
wing, though in all probability most of the birds 
they capture are surprised on the ground, either by 
the ermine's creeping silently upon them, or lying 
hidden in the grass near where they are feed- 
ing, until one happens to come within springing 
distance. At night they must frequently succeed 
in surprising those that roost near the ground, and 
pounce upon them before they have time to take 
alarm. 

At times they frequent the banks of small 
brooks, after the manner of minks, especially those 
brooks that have rocky shores and a quick current ; 
and it is not by any means impossible that they 

IOI 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

may occasionally catch small fish in the shallows 
at the edge of the rapids. 

I have never witnessed an exhibition of their 
swimming powers, but have no doubt that they 
would prove fairly adept on occasion, being, to 
all outward appearance at least, much better 
adapted for it than most of our land animals. 

Weasels of all kinds have always borne the 
reputation of being the most extravagantly cruel 
and bloodthirsty creatures living ; and this is 
undoubtedly true of them in the sense that, ac- 
cording to their size, they kill more of their 
fellow-creatures than any other inhabitant of 
the woods. 

But they never appear to exhibit any of that 
wanton, idle, cold-blooded cruelty inherent in 
the cat and fox tribes, the various members of 
which are so fond of deliberately torturing any 
little beast or bird that is so unfortunate as to 
fall into their clutches. 

The flesh of the ermine, like that of the mink, 

I02 



WEASELS 

consists wholly of bands of dark rubbery muscles 
laid on rather sparingly, except about the head 
and neck, where they swell out in a manner that 
lacks but little of spoiling the general symmetry 
of form displayed by these creatures. Those 
that control the movements of the head and 
jaws, in particular, strike one as almost abnormal 
in their development, — like those of a bull-dog, 
for example, ■ — though without displaying any of 
the clumsiness of structure characteristic of that 
animal. 



i°3 




tr 

UJ 

D 



z 



Chapter IV 
Swimmers 

Mink — Otter 

THE mink closely resembles the otter, but 
is only about two feet in length. Its 
habits are similar, but it is much more generally 
known, the sale of its fur forming no inconsider- 
able portion of the income of many a trapper 
and farmer's boy during the winter ; for, unlike 
its larger relative, it has not yet learned to avoid 
traps to any great extent. Its food consists 
largely of earth-worms and fish, especially eels, 
which it captures in warm springs and mudholes 
where they are bedded for the winter. I know 
of one spring under the steep river bank where 
the minks watch patiently until some unfortunate 
eel is brought into sight by the constant upward 
movement of the water, when it is quickly 
seized and dragged out upon the snow. But 

107 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

the struggle does not end here, for when the 
mink prepares to bear its victim away in tri- 
umph, the latter is apt to wind its body around 
that of its captor, and generally succeeds in 
throwing him end over end more than once 
before being finally subdued and hauled away, 
limp and unresisting, across the snow, which 
when soft holds faithfully the entire history of 
the contest, from the first confused and hysterical 
flounderings at the edge of the water, to the 
triumphal march of the mink up the steep bank, 
with the eel dragging alongside. 

I have never succeeded in discovering how 
they go to work to get earth-worms in winter, 
but that they manage it in one way or another 
is evident enough, for I have examined the 
stomachs of half a dozen or more killed when 
the ground, except around springs and similar 
places, was frozen hard and covered with snow, 
and most of them contained large red earth- 
worms that had been swallowed whole. 

1 08 



SWIMMERS 

If the angler who laboriously chops decaying 
logs to pieces in order to obtain a few borers 
for bait for fishing through the ice could learn 
of the minks how to get such worms as these, 
he would probably consider himself among the 
favoured of mortals. But the mink does not 
always confine himself to such insignificant game, 
by any manner of means ; he not infrequently 
kills birds and animals as large or larger than 
himself, neither ducks, partridges, chickens, 
rabbits, or muskrats being ever wholly safe 
where minks are abundant. 

For the minks are less restricted in their hunt- 
ing-grounds than the others, especially in winter, 
when they adopt many of the ways of the ermine 
and sable, wandering about the woods at random 
in pursuit of game of any kind, from wild mice 
to rabbits, travelling with the easy, undulating 
movement of their family until game is sighted, 
when they pursue it with rapid bounds and 
arched back, like a frightened kitten. 

109 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

Like the otter, they slide down every slope 
they come to, or worm their way about beneath the 
snow, like moles, creeping along under fence rails 
and fallen trees whenever the opportunity offers. 
They are said to climb trees like squirrels ; and 
one reliable hunter told me that he once shot 
one in the top of a tall elm ; but for my own 
part I have never seen one do more than clamber 
about the leaning trunk of a willow, a few feet 
from the ground. 

One winter the minks discovered a swarm of 
wild bees in the hollow trunk of a fallen hem- 
lock near here, and for a short time simply feasted 
on bees and honey. When I visited the place, 
the snow about the log was scattered over with 
frozen bees and bits of comb ; and the one who 
first told me about it said that he had carried 
home several pounds of the best honey, and bees 
enough, as he thought, to stock a hive, but they 
all died before spring. 

A mink will nearly always follow any open 

110 



SWIMMERS 

brook it comes to, even if obliged to change its 
course in order to do so, alternately swimming 
and wading or walking along the bank. On 
reaching the limit of the unfrozen water, he will 
often keep on beneath the ice, especially if the 
water has fallen away from it so as to leave an 
air space, and perhaps a narrow strip of turf un- 
covered along the edge of the water. For it is 
in just such places that meadow-mice spend the 
winter, their burrows opening out from the banks 
in the same manner as muskrat holes. And 
even the smallest brooks harbour young pickerel 
and eels, as well as frogs and lizards. 

One of the most characteristic traits of the 
mink is his fondness for squeezing through nar- 
row places, — a feat for which he is especially 
adapted, for wherever his head can go the rest 
of his body follows easily enough ; and it is sur- 
prising to see how many small passages he 
manages to wriggle through in the course of a 
night. Every exposed root or fallen tree, tilted 

in 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

ice cake or stone wall furnishes one or more 
opportunities which he is sure to improve, to the 
indignation of the trappers, who declare that if 
the minks would only be a little more careful 
of their clothes, their fur would be just as valu- 
able in March as in December. But before the 
last of the winter most of them have so worn 
away the glossy over-hair on their shoulders as 
to have materially reduced the selling price of 
their skins, besides having recklessly exposed 
themselves to the increasing sunlight, which 
causes the tips of the fur to curl over in little 
hooks invisible to the untrained eye, but instantly 
seized upon and condemned by the furrier, so 
that by the time the season for trapping musk- 
rats has fairly opened, minks are worth only about 
half as much as they were in the fall, and soon 
become practically valueless, though with char- 
acteristic obstinacy they persist in stepping into 
traps never intended for them. The trapper 
who, in November, growled because the musk- 



112 



z 
z 

z 
H 
pi 




SWIMMERS 

rats kept getting into his mink traps when they 
still needed several months to become " prime " 
in, now growls on finding the mink which had 
so exasperatingly avoided his traps all winter, 
when his pelt would have sold for several dollars 
perhaps, caught ignominously in a muskrat trap 
in April, his faded coat already showing little 
tufts of pale under-fur detaching themselves from 
the skin. For in the spring minks haunt the 
muskrat grounds more than at any other time, 
penetrating their burrows and climbing over their 
cabins, or wading along their paths in the shal- 
low water, and robbing the muskrat traps of their 
victims. 

They never appear to have any established 
homes, but sleep wherever it is most convenient, 
often in the nest of a muskrat, after having killed 
or driven off the owner. A favourite place is 
beneath a stump, or in the hollow root of a tree, 
or among rocks, their taste in such matters being 
very similar to that of the otter. 

XI 5 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

In April the female raises her family in some 
such place, or else she digs out a short burrow 
under the overhanging bank, probably making 
sure that the entrance, whether natural or arti- 
ficial, is only just big enough to admit her ; for 
most male animals of the weasel family are ad- 
dicted to the unfortunate habit of dining on the 
young of their own race, — a habit which may 
perhaps explain the pronounced difference in the 
size of the sexes, the females averaging little 
more than half as long as their mates, and being 
much slenderer in proportion to their length; 
and it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose 
that when the males first adopted the custom 
of seeking out and devouring their offspring, 
the smallest females would have a decided ad- 
vantage in being able to have their nurseries in 
quarters so narrow as to make it difficult or 
impossible for the males to gain admission, so 
that those families which exhibited the greatest 
variation in size between sons and daughters 

T»6 



SWIMMERS 

would increase the fastest, and the females of the 
race be smaller with each succeeding generation. 

I have no positive evidence that the male 
minks possess this cannibal instinct, but, about 
the time the young are brought forth, they sud- 
denly begin to follow the females about every- 
where they go, in a way which might be attrib- 
uted to solicitude for their welfare and a desire 
to afford them protection, but which I am very 
much afraid only indicates hunger and a depraved 
appetite. And the fact that so many of the family 
of weasels have been convicted of a similar crime 
is certainly against them. 

Trout brooks, tumbling over rocky beds, be- 
tween wooded hills, are commonly supposed to 
be the favourite haunts of minks ; but they seem 
to be equally abundant along the more sluggish 
reed-grown streams and mill-ponds of the low 
lands, and in tangled swamps, or out on the tide- 
swept marshes within sound of the breakers, 
where they usually make their homes in hay- 

117 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

stacks in order to be above the reach of the tide, 
digging cosey tunnels in the soft hay, like rat- 
holes in a haymow in the barn. At low tide 
they ramble along the bottoms of the intersecting 
ditches that drain the marsh, where they find an 
abundant supply of small fry and shell-fish and 
eels, with an occasional muskrat, bound on the 
same errand as themselves ; or else they slip 
between the stems of the coarse marsh grass on 
the borders of the shallow ponds, to waylay 
the marsh birds feeding there, and pick up the 
wounded ones left by the sportsmen. 

The ditches are a yard or more in depth, and 
only six or eight inches wide, and are cut at first 
with perpendicular sides which, after a few years, 
come together at the top, leaving underground 
passages where the minks can travel in safety, 
except in the late fall and winter, when the pro- 
fessional trapper is on the war-path. 

But the trapper has only to place his traps 
on the bottoms of the ditches, and visit them 

118 



SWIMMERS 

between tides whenever it is convenient, know- 
ing, that twice each day the tide will overflow 
them and drown any mink that may have been 
so unfortunate as to put his foot into one of 
them in the mean time. 

Minks exhibit much of the playful humour 
of otters, and even when alone are often seen 
playing about in the sun like kittens. They 
swim rapidly, either under water or on the sur- 
face, using all four feet like a dog, and from time 
to time raising their long necks and triangular, 
snake-like heads several inches above the surface, 
to look about them. I have never seen one 
chasing fish under water, but have no doubt that 
they do it just as otters do, following their prey 
through all its frantic twisting and dodging until 
it is captured. 

Most birds exhibit curiosity rather than alarm 
at sight of a mink, or at all events they express 
their emotions, whatever they are, in a different 
manner. Instead of screaming as they do when 

n 9 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

a fox or bird of prey is in sight, they gather 
in the neighbouring trees without any unusual 
outcry, while from time to time one of their 
number flies along slowly just over the mink, 
as if to examine it, at times approaching quite 
close, — and then away again to join its fellows. 

I once saw a mink trying to catch some robins 
in an open pasture, and though they were careful 
to keep out of his way, there was no general 
alarm given, as would have been the case if the 
enemy had been a hawk or fox, or even a cat. 

In most districts minks vary greatly in abun- 
dance from year to year, their numbers depend- 
ing largely on the value fashion chooses to bestow 
upon their fur. Some thirty years ago they rose 
in favour until their skins brought five or ten dol- 
lars each, and they were killed in such numbers 
that in a short time they became almost extinct 
throughout the country. But, fortunately for 
them, mink fur soon after became unfashionable 
again, and remained so for ten or fifteen years, 

120 



SWIMMERS 

the best skins bringing only fifty or seventy-five 
cents apiece at that time. And as muskrat fur 
belonging to the same class was correspondingly 
cheap, very few traps were set for either animal, 
so that the minks were able to roam about in 
comparative safety. At that time I remember 
that their tracks were to be seen about every- 
where in the winter, along the road-sides and by 
every brook and mill-pond. 

For the last few years, however, their fur has 
been steadily advancing in favour and their num- 
bers have decreased accordingly ; and even where 
they are reasonably abundant in summer and 
early fall, there are usually few to be found after 
the first of the winter. Last season, for example, 
there were several families of them, apparently, in 
this immediate vicinity, as I repeatedly noticed 
their footprints about the water, and had two 
or three good opportunities for observing the 
animals themselves. 

But I heard of at least ten that were killed 

I2T 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

within a mile of this place during the last of 
October and the first part of November, and, by 
the time the snow came, there was not a mink 
track to be found for miles about, though until 
the streams had frozen to the depth of a foot or 
more I found otter tracks after every snow-fall. 
The only mink tracks that I have seen this winter 
have been in an extensive swamp, two or three miles 
to the north, and these only on two occasions. 

In December I noticed the tracks of a large 
weasel near a brook, and, following them, found 
where it had dug down into the snow beneath a 
little hemlock and uncovered the dead body of a 
female mink. There was no sign, as far as I 
could see, that the mink had been shot, or killed 
by any of the larger beasts or birds of prey ; it was 
simply curled up as if asleep, and I could not 
help wondering if it could possibly have been 
hibernating, as some hunters claim that they do, 
and drowned by the freshet that had flooded the 
hollow a few weeks before. 

122 



SWIMMERS 

The white spot that so frequently marks the 
chin or throat of the mink is a peculiar feature, it 
is so perfectly white and sharply defined against 
the dark brown fur that surrounds it. It does 
not seem to depend in any way on age or sex, 
about one mink in ten being wholly without any 
white marking whatever. A rather larger number 
have one half of the chin, as far back as the angle 
of the mouth, white and the other half brown, the 
dividing line between the two colours being straight 
and .clear-cut down the exact middle of the chin. 

Perhaps three out of four have the chin wholly 
white, and of these nearly half have a white spot 
on the throat or breast as well, usually just be- 
tween the fore-legs, though often in the form of 
a narrow stripe along the throat, sometimes 
extending all the way from the chin to the breast 
or even further, and again broken into a series of 
spots of varying size, while I have heard of at 
least one mink marked with a row of spots down 
its back as well. 

123 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

These markings, together with the great range 
of size and colour of adult specimens, for a long 
time led trappers and naturalists alike to the 
opinion that there were two distinct species, — - a 
belief firmly held by many, and not absolutely 
denied by naturalists until comparatively recent 
times. 

They distinguished them as the black or moun- 
tain-brook mink, and the common mink or 
marten, which they claimed was much larger and 
heavier, with lighter coloured fur and white throat. 

Only about fifteen years ago I remember few 
appeared to doubt the existence of the two species, 
though how they went to work to classify them 
as they did is hard to imagine ; for judging from 
scores of skins that I have examined at one 
time and another, I should say that the smaller 
specimens are just about as likely to be light 
coloured with white throats as the largest, and that 
the white markings are as often found on dark 
coloured minks as on light ones. 

124 



SWIMMERS 

Yesterday , March so, 1S99, I found the tracks 
of a large mink in some hemlock woods by the 
edge of a swamp ; he appeared to have been 
chasing rabbits back and forth among the trees, 
sometimes following in their tracks, and again 
evidently trying to head them off as they ran in 
circles ; and, judging from the wild leaps they 
often made, he must have been quite near them 
at times, though I found no actual evidence of 
success on the part of the mink. 

What surprised me a good deal at first was 
the fact that he seemed purposely to avoid the 
water, as there was an open brook only a few 
rods away which was formerly a great favourite of 
theirs in winter, since it never freezes and flows 
for a large part of the way underground, whole 
reaches of it being roofed over by the trunks of 
fallen trees and dead leaves and vegetable mould, 
held together by the roots of the living forest. 

But yesterday there were no mink tracks any- 
where along its banks, nor have there been any 

125 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

there this winter as far as I know, though I have 
found them on two or three occasions at no great 
distance away in the swamp. 

It certainly begins to look as if the minks 
have at last learned that that particular brook 
is dangerous to them, in winter at least ; for there 
have been traps set there every winter, and all 
winter, for the last six years or more, and dozens 
of minks have met their fate there, though I 
have not heard of any having been taken at that 
place within the last year or two. 

It is a pretty well-known fact among hunters 
that most flesh-eating animals can be more readily 
called by imitating the squeaking of mice than 
in any other way ; and it would seem to prove 
conclusively enough that these creatures depend 
largely upon the sense of hearing in their strug- 
gle for a livelihood. 

Standing one day beside an old tumble-down 
rail-fence that ran along between the woods and 

126 



SWIMMERS 

salt marshes* half-hidden among the brambles 
and tall grass, I caught the merest glimpse of a 
mink slipping along between the bottom rails. 
As he was evidently unaware of my presence^ 
I determined to see more of him, and began 
squeaking in imitation of a mouse, and quickly 
had the satisfaction of seeing him make his 
appearance on a projecting stake much nearer 
than when I had first seen him. 

Stretching himself along a projecting stake, 
he appeared to listen and look in my direction ; 
but although I was standing in plain sight on 
the edge of the marsh hardly a rod away, the fact 
that he was obliged to look directly into the 
sun evidently made it quite impossible for him 
to distinguish clearly what he saw. 

At the end of a few moments he dropped into 
the grass and started in my direction, the trem- 
bling grass-blades clearly indicating his progress 
as he approached nearer and nearer until, almost 
at my feet, he vanished, and, in spite of the most 

127 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

patient waiting on my part, absolutely refused 
to show himself again. 

The tracks of a mink are in pairs, two or 
three inches apart, and one decidedly in advance, 
the pairs from one to four or five feet apart. 
About the only other track with which this one 
is likely to be confused is that of the musk- 
rat. But in wet snow the muskrat's toes are 
seen to be more distinct and separate, and when- 
ever the hind-feet are brought down fairly on the 
snow, they make a much larger print than the 
forefeet ; while a mink's feet are all practically 
of the same size. 

In deep soft snow, the impression made by 
the body of the animal serves as a distinction ; 
for the mink's body makes a narrow, rounded 
mark, while the muskrat's is wide and usually 
with upright sides and flat bottom. The same 
distinction holds good whenever the creature bur- 
rows into soft snow or forces its way through 
melting ice at the edge of the water. 

128 



SWIMMERS 

But the most distinctive feature is the mark 
made by the muskrat's tail, which is often 
dragged continuously, marking a distinct and un- 
broken line between the footprints several rods 
in length, and when this is not the case, is nearly 
always found to touch here and there at intervals, 
either between the tracks or at one. side. 

In summer and early autumn when the streams 
are low and the leaves are at their thickest, minks 
are particularly fond of prowling about swamps 
and wet woodlands, keeping to the lowest level 
with all the pertinacity of running water, and fol- 
lowing the drying channels of the smaller brooks 
for miles together, where the reduced waters just 
linger along through the depressions in the black 
mud mottled with whatever of sunlight or moon- 
light manages to find its way between the leaves. 

Here they undoubtedly capture insects and 
birds in abundance, as well as frogs and small fish. 
For in times .of drought practically all the wild 
life of the woods congregates about such places, or 

9 129 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

visits them at certain times of the day/ water 
being one of the things which none of our wild 
creatures appear willing to go without for many 
hours at a time. 

Along the larger streams the minks keep 
beneath the over-hanging banks as much as pos- 
sible, sometimes crawling out along low-growing 
branches or fallen tree-trunks to watch for fish 
beneath. 

When the alewives run up into the fresh water 
in June, the minks must find the food problem a 
very easy matter, as they have only to wait at 
the edge of the shallows above tide-water until 
a school comes along, and seize whatever fish are 
crowded out of the water by their fellows, or 
become stranded among the pebbles by their own 
carelessness and impetuosity. 

For a few weeks before the alewives run, the 
suckers are going through practically the same 
performance, so that for the first few weeks of 
summer the minks must have more fish at their 

130 



SWIMMERS 

disposal than they can possibly eat, even though 
it does come at a time when there are little minks 
to support. 

And I have noticed that the females nearly 
always choose the immediate vicinity of such 
places for bringing up their families. These 
families usually keep together, apparently with- 
out wandering to any great extent until cold 
weather, with the exception of perhaps the old 
males, who may spend the summer roving about 
the country at random, as they do in winter 
and spring, though I frequently find them in 
company with the others in the autumn, all 
having been brought together, perhaps, by the 
abundance of fish or game at some particular 
spot. 

For the last three or four centuries, the race of 
minks has probably had heavier odds to fight 
against in the struggle for existence than most of 
our small animals ; and the fact that they are still 
to be found everywhere, in more or less abun-' 

I 3 I 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

dance, even within the limits of many of our 
smaller towns and villages, might well be taken to 
indicate the possession of superior intelligence on 
their part. But I am inclined to think that they 
really owe more to their physical perfection than 
to their wits, which, it seems to me, hardly corre- 
spond to the agile and vivacious movements of 
the creatures themselves, but are rather of the 
stubborn, slow-working order, quite incapable of 
grasping any new and unforeseen situation, though 
never failing their owners in a crisis. 

I have seen minks face death in all sorts of 
situations, but have never witnessed any exhibi- 
tion of fear or panic on their part, and am almost 
tempted to believe that the race is actually devoid 
of any such emotion. 

They belong to the tribe of fishers and 
hunters, equally at home on the land or in the 
water, and ready at any moment to plunge into 
the rapids and grapple with fish as large as them- 
selves, or chase and pull down a hare among the 

132 



SWIMMERS 

birches, and have inherited their tough and elastic 
bodies from countless generations of ancestors 
who gained their living in a similar manner. 

While they unquestionably experience the 
same wild joy in hunting and fishing and fight- 
ing as other flesh-eating animals, including man 
himself, I am unable to discover that they are 
in the habit of carrying it to the extreme that 
some of the others do, being content to stop 
killing when they have satisfied their immediate 
hunger in most instances. 

In warm weather they often leave the fish they 
have caught lying about on the bank, having 
satisfied themselves with a few bits from the 
head or back, or whatever part they find most 
to their taste. But in winter I have never found 
anything of the kind, and believe that they are 
in the way of carrying off and hiding for future 
use whatever they are unable to eat at the time, 
though there seems to be no evidence of their 
storing up the dead bodies of their victims by 

i33 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

the dozen, as their cousins the ermines and pole- 
cats are said to do. 

When a mink finds a muskrat caught in a 
trap, he usually manages to eat pretty nearly half 
of it the first night, and returns the following 
night for some more. And it is quite possible 
that in many instances when the trapper finds his 
trap holding the foot of a muskrat only, and 
concludes that the latter was determined to get 
away, even if it cost a leg, that he has really been 
robbed by a mink that has succeeded in dragging 
away what was left after his meal. 

An old hunter, one of the closest observers of 
nature I have ever known, once told me that 
female minks hibernated in winter in the same 
manner as bears, though it was his belief that, 
unlike the bears, they never brought forth their 
young at that season. At first I refused to take 
the slightest stock in w 7 hat he said, the whole 
thing appeared so absurd and so utterly at vari- 
ance with the teachings of those naturalists who 

*34 



SWIMMERS 

have made the closest possible study of the 
habits of minks. Since then, however, I have 
kept my eves open for any hint that might have 
the slightest bearing on the subject, and to my 
surprise have found many things that would 
seem to point to the correctness of the old 
hunter's theory. To begin with, he said that 
late in the winter he had repeatedly known 
female minks to make their appearance from 
beneath snow that had lain undisturbed for days 
or even weeks, the tracks apparently beginning 
where he first observed them, the difference in 
size between the two sexes being sufficient to 
make it easy to distinguish between their tracks 
at a glance; and, moreover, since he first began 
trapping he had noticed that while the sexes were 
about equally abundant in the autumn, the 
females always became very scarce at the ap- 
proach of winter, and remained so until spring, 
when they suddenly increased in numbers, and 
became much the more abundant of the two. 

i35 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

This is also the experience of trappers in 
general, and may be verified by any one who 
cares to take the trouble to look into the matter. 
Evidently no one has ever discovered a mink in 
a state of hibernation, — at any rate, no such 
case appears ever to have been reported ; but 
this does not necessarily prove that it is not a 
regular habit among them. 

The cry of the mink is seldom heard, even in 
places where they are fairly abundant, as they 
have evidently learned that the greatest safety 
lies in silence. It is a peculiarly shrill, rattling, 
whistle-like scream that can be heard at a con- 
siderable distance. 

It is remarkable that so large an animal as 
the otter should still hold its own in com- 
paratively thickly settled -districts throughout 
the country, and be practically unknown to any 
except naturalists and a few others. I have 
talked with old trappers who have followed the 
business for years, and could tell correctly at a 

136 



SWIMMERS 

glance the age and sex of the creature that made 
each mink and fox track on the snow, and how 
long each track had been made ; but though 
they knew that otters were killed in their 
neighbourhood nearly every season, and that 
they occasionally destroyed or carried off their 
traps, they had but the vaguest idea of the 
animal itself or its habits, nor could they describe 
or recognise its track in the snow, though it is 
quite unlike that made by any other creature in 
these parts, and once seen and recognised cannot 
be mistaken for anything else. Thoreau in his 
diary, under date of December 6, 1856, gives 
probably the best description ever written of 
otter tracks. He saw them on the ice of Fair- 
haven Pond and Concord River. After reading 
it, one seems to have learned all that there is to 
learn concerning the winter habits of otters. In 
Thoreau's day, otters were evidently no more 
abundant or generally known than at present ; 
nor do their habits appear to have changed in 

*39 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

any way since then. They still follow in the 
footsteps of their ancestors, though part of their 
course may lie between cultivated fields, instead 
of tangled swamps and forests where trees that 
had died of sheer old age far outnumbered the 
living ones. In winter they still coast down hill 
on the snow crust by moonlight, as they did 
before the country was settled, but keeping a 
sharper lookout for steel-traps than formerly, 
their wariness in this direction at the present 
day being something wonderful, and probably 
accounting for the fact of their not having been 
entirely exterminated. A century or more ago 
they were very abundant in all parts of the 
country, but were so persistently trapped and 
hunted that at last the race seemed on the direct 
road to extinction. Hunters no longer found 
their pursuit profitable, and took it for granted 
that they were extinct in reality, giving them a 
chance to breathe in comparative safety. At 
the present day whenever one is killed it has 

140 



SWIMMERS 

usually strayed by mere chance into some mink 
or muskrat trap, concealed by freshet or rising 
tide more successfully than its owner could ever 
have hoped, or it has fallen to the lucky snapshot 
of a duck or fox hunter who is hardly aware of 
the value of his prize when he has secured it. 

But the ordinary mink or muskrat trap stands 
but a slight chance of holding so powerful an 
animal as an otter ; while, judging from a late 
experience of mine, a shot-gun as ordinarily 
loaded is not much better. 

One week last winter we had a warm rain in 
the night that carried away most of the snow, 
and broke up the ice on the streams ; and one 
morning I found the track of an otter within a 
quarter of a mile of the house, evidently made 
during the last part of the night. 

The animal had gone up-stream, and for the 
first half mile, which was through a comparatively 
treeless pasture, only landed two or three times ; 
but farther on, where the stream flowed between 

141 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

higher banks covered with a dense growth of 
young pines, the tracks were much more numer- 
ous and wandered farther from the water at times, 
showing where the otter had been nosing about 
rabbit holes and beneath decaying logs ; and here 
it was joined by another much more recently 
made, which I followed until I felt sure from the 
appearance of the trodden snow that the otter 
could be only a very few minutes ahead of me. 
So I stopped and waited motionless, hoping 
to get sight of the animal. In perhaps twenty 
minutes an otter came to the surface of the water 
hardly thirty yards away, and came swimming 
almost directly towards me with the whole out- 
line of his head, back, and tail straight and level 
with the water, reminding me of a piece of drift- 
wood pushed along rapidly by the current. After 
swimming for a few yards, he sank out of sight, 
but almost immediately poked his head up again 
through the soft ice still nearer, and for a little 
while busied himself wallowing about in the 

142 



SWIMMERS 

shallow water among the alders and young pines 
where the stream had overflowed its banks. 

He seemed to progress as swiftly and easily 
through the water-soaked snow as in the clear 
water, and sometimes came up beneath soft ice 
several inches thick, breaking up through it with 
his whole length at once. 

He soon disappeared beneath the ice, to come 
in sight again out in the open current, swimming 
down-stream on the further side of the top rails 
of a fence almost submerged by the freshet, and 
climbed upon the buttressed trunk of a willow 
about forty yards from me. As soon as he was 
fairly out of the water, I fired both barrels at 
him, and he slid off into the water, but, contrary 
to my expectations, failed to come to the top 
again, at least at that place, though a few min- 
utes after I saw an otter swim for a few yards 
between two willows a hundred yards further 
down-stream. 

I could hardly believe at the time that I had 
J 43 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

failed to kill him, for I had number four shot in 
my right barrel, and number one in my left, and 
a gun that shoots close and hard. But I have 
since talked with an old hunter who claims to 
have killed several, and he tells me that I might 
as well have loaded with sand. According to his 
accounts, buckshot is the only suitable size for 
shooting otters with, and even then one must get 
as close as possible. I certainly hope that what 
he says is true, and that the otter is still able to 
attend to his fishing. 

That was the only time that I am certain of 
having seen a live otter at liberty in his native 
haunts ; but several years ago I followed one's 
tracks until it terminated at a slide on the bank 
of a tide-water stream, where a space several 
yards wide, reaching from the top of the high 
bank to the water, was swept clear of snow by 
their sliding. 

The top of the bank was covered with trees, 
beneath whose roots a kind of natural cavern 

144 



SWIMMERS 

had been hollowed out by the water, perhaps a 
foot high and twenty or thirty feet wide at the 
entrance, and extending back indefinitely into the 
gloom. 

As I stood there in the margin of the stream 
examining the tracks, I was startled by a low but 
very distinct growling not wholly unlike that of 
a cat with a mouse, though deeper. It issued 
from the cave above my head, not ten feet away, 
and continued for several minutes ; but whether 
the creature was growling at me or at one of its 
own kind, or over its dinner, I was unable to 
determine. 

The following summer I was fishing with two 
companions along the fresh water reaches of the 
same stream, when something entered the water 
not far from us, with a noise exactly like that 
made by a good-sized dog plunging after a stick ; 
but, though only a few rods away, the foliage was 
so dense that none of us was able to catch so 

much as a glimpse of the creature that made it, 
io 145 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

and by the time we had reached the spot there 
were only the disturbed water and trodden grass 
to be seen. 

The otter subsists almost entirely upon fish, 
and has the reputation of being- a veritable epicure 
in his preference for certain kinds, catching only 
salmon or trout where these are to be obtained, 
and when fish are sufficiently abundant, taking 
only a few bites from the shoulder of each. But 
those about here are of necessity forced to con- 
tent themselves with much plainer fare, though I 
fancy they get their share of brook trout even 
now, and probably enjoy them all the more on 
account of their rarity ; and who knows but their 
ancestors got just as tired of an everlasting diet 
of salmon and trout as some of our own ances- 
tors are said to have done? Even at the present 
day the otters probably never suffer from hunger, 
as there are always plenty of the more common- 
place fish to be had, not to mention frogs of 
half-a-dozen species. And there are indications 

146 



SWIMMERS 

that point to a still humbler diet of insects ; for 
wherever there are otters, there are sure to be 
numerous places to be found where they have 
been clawing up the moss, pine-needles, or turf, 
as the case may be, often working over several 
rods in one night. Such spots are often spoken 
of as playing grounds, and perhaps that is what 
they really are, as they certainly often look as 
if made in sport, particularly when, as is often 
the case, the pine-needles, etc., have been piled in 
little heaps, with dry and broken sticks showing 
the marks of teeth scattered about. . I have 
known them to do this sort of thing at all 
seasons, and even when there were several inches 
of snow on the ground, but I think that they 
are much more in the way of it in the spring 
and fall than at any other time. 

The only genuine otter slides that I am 
familiar with are collected within the space of 
a mile, though almost every brook has its steep 
banks here and there down which otters slide 

M7 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

from time to time when going back to the 
water. 

But the regular slides, although each may not 
be used more than a dozen times each year, look 
after they have been used as if several otters had 
been sliding there for hours ; and there can be 
little doubt that they do it wholly for the fun 
of the thing, for I have never found any sign of 
their having eaten anything at the top of the 
slide, and those that are most frequently used 
are not near good fishing-holes, but on shallow 
reaches of the streams where fish are seldom to be 
found at any season, owing to the clayey bottom 
and rapid current. In most instances there is a 
round-about path from the water to the top of 
the slide, and sometimes the upper part of the 
slide itself twists about among the tree-trunks 
for several yards before the final pitch is reached 
down the slippery bank to the water. 

The incline for the last part of the way is 
usually something like forty-five degrees, and 

148 



SWIMMERS 

the speed attained must be something startling, 
though only for a few yards, especially on an icy 
snow crust. 

The slides that I have been describing, of 
which there are four or five, are all on tide-water 
streams which remain open long after the fresh 
waters are frozen over, which may account for 
their popularity. Whenever an otter is travel- 
ling across lots through the snow, and comes to 
an incline of sufficient steepness, he takes advan- 
tage of it and slides to the bottom, just as a fox 
or mink will ; but I have never known them to 
amuse themselves by repeatedly sliding down 
the same snow-bank unless there was open water 
at its foot. 

In cold weather they spend most of their time 
beneath the ice, after the manner of muskrats, 
and are said to be fond of forcing their way up 
little brooks hardly large enough to admit them, 
probably driving all the fish before them, or 
snapping up those that try to get by. 

149 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

It is generally denied that otters ever occupy 
real burrows ; but in nearly every stream there are 
burrows to be found with the openings under 
water, like muskrat holes, only a great deal larger, 
perhaps eight or ten inches in diameter, and 
not inhabited by muskrats. I have always be- 
lieved that they were muskrat holes that had 
been enlarged by otters to be used as occasion 
offered, when fishing under the ice perhaps, but I 
have no positive evidence to that effect. 

The young are said to be reared in natural 
caves in the bank above high water, or in hollow 
logs, or at the bottoms of hollow trees, for in the 
matter of lodgings they seem usually to prefer 
putting up with whatever presents itself to exert- 
ing themselves in the way of making improve- 
ments, — a trait that seems to be characteristic of 
most carnivorous animals. 



150 




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Chapter V 
Swimmers Concluded 

Muskrat 

FEW people, probably, realise that if the 
muskrat were suddenly to become extinct, 
it would mean a clear loss of something like half 
a million dollars annually to this country and 
Canada. For that is the estimated value of the 
year's crop of raw skins, which has not varied 
materially in amount since the country was first 
settled, as the muskrat refuses to be driven off 
by the most constant persecution, and though at 
times considerably reduced in numbers in certain 
districts, a single season suffices to bring them 
to their former abundance. Wherever there is a 
stream or pond with reed-grown shores, and yellow- 
lily roots or clams to be had by diving, muskrats 
are sure to be found ; and their numbers usually 
depend more on the food-supply than on free- 

i53 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

dom from trappers. For after a few months of 
experience with traps, the survivors learn to 
avoid them so successfully as to render their 
further pursuit unprofitable, and the trapper must 
move on to new hunting-grounds — though they 
generally forget their cautiousness during the 
succeeding summer, and by autumn are as un- 
suspecting as ever. 

In summer they live in burrows reaching well 
up into the banks and only a few inches below the 
turf. When the water is very low at midsummer, 
they dig canals from the lowest openings to the 
channel, or perhaps these canals are simply 
burrows that have caved in, — at any rate, they 
serve as paths down which the muskrats swim or 
wade to their feeding-grounds. Most of the 
burrows are dug in August or September, and at 
that season I often come upon streams roiled by 
their digging, and, following up the bank, some- 
times for a dozen rods or more, I have discovered 
them at work at it. 

!S4 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

The beginning usually appears to be the most 
difficult part of the job, as they begin at the bottom 
of the stream, and, owing to the buoyancy of the 
water, probably find considerable difficulty in 
holding themselves down to their work; for they 
keep rising to the surface, to all appearances com- 
pletely exhausted, and float about on the water 
puffing like toy steam-launches, sometimes rest- 
ing their chins on any support that offers, — a 
low-growing alder branch, or the root of a tree, or 
else they climb ashore to dry their fur in the air. 

As the work progresses, they come up less 
frequently, until at last you might watch for 
hours and only see the loose earth and muddy 
water pushed out of the hole and swept away by 
the current. The hole is continued high up into 
the bank, beyond the reach of ordinary freshets, 
where it ends in a chamber filled with soft grass 
and rushes. Several burrows often branch off 
from this chamber, and as a general thing all their 
openings are under water, those higher up in the 

*55 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

bank being mostly accidental ; but in some in- 
stances a door-way is dug out beneath the roots 
of a tree, probably for convenience at times of 
high water, though used more or less at all 
seasons when the stream is free from ice. 

Their food varies little during the season, their 
main stand-by being aquatic plants and shell-fish ; 
and these are equally accessible, winter or summer. 
The roots of the common yellow water-lily are 
several inches in diameter, and yards in length, 
looking like great wrinkled green-and-white 
reptiles sprawled along the bottom, which is 
almost covered with them in places. Inside, they 
are white and crisp, but have a watery, character- 
less sort of flavour, which appears to suit the 
muskrats well enough, however, as they constitute 
a very considerable portion of their food. 

A muskrat will frequently dig up and tow 
ashore a piece larger and heavier than himself, and 
settle down for a good square meal ; and it is 
astonishing to see what an insignificant remnant 

iS6 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

is left when he has finished. I know of no other 
creature of similar size capable of eating so much 
in a given time, or of spending so much time in 
eating. 

It has always seemed to me that, in his own 
quiet way, the muskrat enjoys existence as largely 
as any animal in nature. It is true he lacks the 
excitement of the chase, which forms so large a 
part of the lives of the fox, weasel, and cat tribes ; 
but then he almost never suffers from hunger, 
and any one who has ever watched him enjoying a 
swim is bound to envy him ever after. 

One would suppose that where he is in the way 
of swimming for every meal he takes, and almost 
everywhere he goes, he might get a little bored 
at it and look upon it as work. But it is the com- 
monest thing in the world to see them in hot 
weather rolling over and over in deep water, and 
floating lazily about, as if the opportunity only 
offered once in a life-time. 

All summer long they swim and wade and 
i57 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

paddle about in the shrunken streams and ponds, 
or doze, huddled into a ball, on the edge of the 
bank, hidden by the rank growth of flags and 
bulrushes among which they have well-trodden 
paths leading from place to place. The young 
are born and brought up in the burrows, but only 
spend a short time there ; for they grow with 
amazing rapidity, and learn to shift for themselves 
in a remarkably short time. 

Once when I was wading across a stream about 
knee-deep, a little fellow, somewhat less than half 
grown, came swimming along close to the bottom; 
on coming to the place where my boots had 
stirred up the mud, he seemed bewildered, and 
rose to the surface to get his bearings, and, after a 
look around, dived again, and in so doing exposed 
his tail, which I immediately grasped, lifting him 
half out of water. He did not appear to be 
greatly alarmed at the circumstance, and, after 
some futile attempts at climbing up his own tail 
to bite my hand, seemed perfectly resigned to 

158 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

await the course of events, resting quietly on the 
water, which slipped away from his nose as the 
current swirled past him. 

When I released him, he acted as though he 
had been expecting it all along, and, diving, con- 
tinued his travels down-stream as if nothing had 
happened. When the fall rains come, the musk- 
rats are able to swim about their feeding-grounds, 
where before they were obliged to walk; and 
now they begin to have their regular feeding 
places, to which they carry their roots, or what- 
ever else they find to eat, — anything that they 
can clamber upon answers, an old log or a 
tussock, or the ruins of a last year's cabin. 

Sometimes they carry a few sticks and pieces 
of sod to some chosen spot, and build up a 
resting-place in shallow water. They build their 
cabins in October and November ; and there 
seem to be about as many methods of building 
as cabins. Some that I have seen started ap- 
peared to be simply solid heaps of sod without 

T 59 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

any cavity inside at first, but hollowed out later. 
This, however, would seem a very impracticable 
way of working when the difficulty of disposing 
of the material removed is considered ; but per- 
haps they simply dig down from the top and add 
whatever is removed to the exterior, for the upper 
chamber is often close to the surface, with only 
a shallow covering of material, which allows a 
passage for the air and sometimes for the inhabi- 
tants themselves. The chamber is usually less 
than a foot in diameter, and lined with soft grass 
and moss ; a passage extends from this chamber 
downwards and to one side, to another larger 
one, more or less filled with water, and from 
here down to still another, below the bed of the 
stream itself. The last is formed merely by the 
junction of several burrows, some of which extend 
up into the bank, and others to the deepest part 
of the channel. 

This is the commonest type of cabin that I 
have examined. Some of the smaller ones have 

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SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

only the upper chamber, without any downward 
passage whatever ; others have it in the centre or 
near the bottom, with a foot or more of material 
above; while some that I have seen were large 
enough to have four or five apartments. One 
that I saw in a little pond in the woods last 
November must have been at least four or five 
feet high, and nearly twice as long. Many of 
them are built in willow-trees, or on platforms 
of sticks which the muskrats arrange among the 
alders ; and here they exhibit a good deal of the 
constructive ability of the beaver, cutting their 
wood on shore in a similar manner, and often 
towing it long distances to their building sites, 
where they wattle it firmly between the alder 
stems for a foundation. 

Cabins so placed are generally composed 
largely of cat-tail stalks and green twigs, while 
those on the ground are more often built of mud 
and pieces of sod. I know of one large one, 
supported among the alders directly over deep 

163 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

water, that has been in existence at least eight 
years, and though partly destroyed from time to 
time by trappers and freshets, has been regularly 
remodelled each fall, and is still in good condi- 
tion ; while two others near by among the willows 
have been so interlaced by the fibrous roots of 
these trees as to be practically indestructible. 

They have not changed in outward appearance 
in the slightest degree for fifteen years or more; 
and I have not the shadow of a doubt that they 
are fully twice as old as that, and I am unable to 
see why they should not last indefinitely. They 
are perfectly smooth and dome-shaped outside, 
like the popularly accepted idea of a beaver 
cabin ; and though once or twice the muskrats 
have attempted to raise a second story, or a 
lean-to at one side, it has always been washed 
away sooner or later, leaving the cabin as it was 
before. One of the cabins appears to be always 
occupied ; but tjae other, being placed much 
lower, is under water so much of the time that 

164 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

it has to serve more as a resting-place than a 
dwelling. 

Muskrats will sometipies fix up a hollow stump 
by merely roofing over the top and having an 
entrance among the roots beneath ; and I know 
of one placed on a large leaning willow-tree, 
where I think the passage-way op'ens directly 
into the hollow trunk, which is made to serve as 
a stairway to the bottom of the stream. 

The cabins are not much used except at times 
of high water and in winter, though I doubt if 
they are wholly abandoned at any season. 

So long as the streams remain well frozen, the 
muskrat is practically free from care and danger. 
The temperature about him hardly varies a 
degree, whatever the weather may be above the 
ice. He know T s nothing of snowstorms or sleet 
or high wind, while the ice holds firm, though 
there may be several feet of rushing, foaming 
water over the ice in times of freshet. Down 
where he is at work, it flows with the same gentle 

165 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

motion as in summer, barely swaying the water- 
weed and cresses as it slips between them. He 
is capable of holding his breath for a surprisingly 
long time, and when compelled to renew it, has 
only to come up and breathe it out beneath the 
ice, where it soon becomes oxygenated by the 
water. There are always bubbles of varying size 
just under the ice, but whether they contain 
oxygen, or only hydrogen gas generated by the 
decomposing vegetable matter at the bottom, I 
am unable to say ; if the former, they must add 
materially to the muskrat's air-supply, and, theo- 
retically, contact with freezing water should 
render them fit to breathe. But there is gen- 
erally plenty of air to be had close up under 
the edge of the bank, where the water has re- 
ceded ; and when the muskrat has captured a 
clam, or succeeded in digging up the root he 
wants, he swims with it to his cabin, or to his 
hole in the bank, to devour it at his leisure. 
Occasionally a foot or more of ice will form 

166 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

when the water is very high, and when the 
stream has finally withdrawn again to its channel 
a space is left beneath the ice high enough at 
times for a man to stand erect in ; and here the 
muskrats have room to wander about as they 
please, until it settles of its own weight, and even 
then the inequalities of the river-bed usually 
leave them room enough. These open ways 
beneath the ice are of much more frequent oc- 
currence on the little brooks, less than a foot 
across, that flow into the larger ones here and 
there, and up these the muskrats occasionally 
travel, sometimes even to the open springs at 
their sources, but not nearly as often as might 
be expected ; for there is always plenty of food 
to be had along these brooks, and room enough 
to move about in. But they form the regular 
runways of the minks in winter, which would 
naturally deter the muskrats to a certain extent ; 
for at this season minks are almost their only 
enemies, and to meet one alone in this narrow 

167 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

way would be very embarrassing, to say the least. 
The mink is really the smaller in most instances, 
but his long snake-like body and wiry muscles 
give him a decided advantage, and his fondness 
for muskrat flesh is notorious. This may also in 
part account for the fact that in winter muskrats 
rather avoid those shallow portions of the stream 
that are prevented from freezing by warm springs 
or a rapid current. 

There is such a place near here, where, for 
nearly a quarter of a mile, the stream only freezes 
in the most severe weather, and as a consequence 
has always been a favorite resort of the minks. 
But though muskrats are often there at other 
seasons, there is no trace of them to be found 
there in winter. Still there must be an exception 
to every rule, and on the sixth of January I have 
found the tracks of muskrats in the snow at this 
place. They had been going back and forth along 
a little muddy brook near where it joins the main 
stream. One track struck off by itself, and as it 

168 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

was evidently but just made, I followed for 
several hundred yards, and observed where the 
animal had climbed the high bank into the woods 
and dug down into the snow in several places, 
apparently in search of green stuff, nearly a dozen 
rods from the water. Then the track turned 
about and led me back to the stream, appearing 
again on the opposite bank, and stretching right 
across the narrow meadow to a little springy 
bog-hole or quagmire, half-a-dozen rods long 
and only a few feet wide, and almost free from 
ice. The muskrat was sitting in the edge of 
the water here, and we evidently became aware 
of each other's presence at about the same time. 
He at once waded out into the water and al- 
lowed himself to rest on the dead leaves and 
sediment at the bottom, with just his back and 
the top of his head above the surface, and his 
little black eyes fixed intently on me. The 
motion of his breathing kept the surface of the 
water trembling all about him ; but he made no 

169 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

other motion of any kind for several minutes ; 
then he began to turn his head slightly from 
side to side, and at the end of ten minutes evi- 
dently decided that I was some kind of inani- 
mate natural object, and sat up in the water to 
stare at me, then turned about and swam a 
few feet and dived, but without entirely disap- 
pearing beneath the surface, and coming up im- 
mediately with a morsel of some kind, which he 
proceeded to devour. 

Diving again, he got hold of something which 
required his utmost exertion to dislodge; but he 
finally succeeded, and came up with his face plas- 
tered all over with clinging wet leaves and mud, 
which appeared almost to stifle him, and carrying a 
big bulrush or flag-root of some kind, with white 
roots and green inner leaves, firmly grasped in his 
teeth. He swam with this to the partly sub- 
merged root of a tree, where he sat bolt upright 
and fell to gobbling away at his prize, as if almost 
famished. After finishing, he leaned over and 

170 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

felt all about in the water for any fragments he 
might have dropped, and when he found anything 
raised it to his mouth with one hand. Presently 
he began to wash himself, after the manner of a 
squirrel, combing his fur with his claws, and rub- 
bing his face and ears with both paws at the same 
time. 

Any one who has ever handled a muskrat must 
have observed how loosely they are put together, 
as if put into a skin several times too large, and 
hardly attached anywhere ; and this sort of struct- 
ure certainly has its advantages, for the little 
chap I was observing deliberately reached his 
right hind-foot across his back and scratched him- 
self behind his left shoulder. He also appeared 
able to reach any part of his body with either of 
his fore-paws, or with his mouth, and would 
sometimes grasp a fold of skin and pull it 
around into a more convenient position to work 
upon. In a surprisingly short time, he looked 
as dry and fluffy as if he had never been near the 

171 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

water. And then, just as he had completed his 
toilet, he lost his balance and slipped backward 
into the muddy water, and had it all to do over 
again; though it is hard to imagine why he was so 
particular, for, as soon as he had finished, he went 
back to his diving and was soon just as untidy as 
ever. 

At first he would pause every little while to 
stare at me, as if still mistrusting something. 
But although I had advanced a few steps every 
time he dived, until I was on the very edge 
of the ice, and at last crouched so near that I 
could have touched him with my hand, he failed 
to take alarm, and finally ceased to pay any 
attention whatever to my presence. After he had 
exhausted the supply of roots where he was at 
work, he swam a few yards and began in another 
place, where they were more abundant; and when 
these were gone, he commenced crowding in 
under the ice at the edge of the water, and back- 
ing out again, dragging the roots after him. 

172 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

He appeared a good deal put out whenever the 
leaves stuck to his face, and would sit upright and 
hurl them in all directions with his paws, or slap 
them off with a side-stroke. His appetite seemed 
perfectly inexhaustible, and, finally, as my muscles 
began to rebel at being obliged to maintain the 
same cramped position for so long without relief, 
I purposely moved my head slightly, to see what 
effect it might have on him. He dived instantly 
with a splash, and sank to the bottom, where the 
water was about six inches deep, and refused to 
come to the surface, though I tried to raise him 
with a stick. There he lay, and as often as I 
tried to lift him, simply slipped off the stick to 
one side or the other, in the most aggravating 
manner, but apparently with no intentional effort 
on his part. So, fearing that he might persist too 
long for his own good, I left him in order that he 
might have a chance to come up into the air and 
resume his breathing. 

The muskrats that dwell in the tide-water 

i73 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

meadows lead a somewhat different life from 
those I have been describing, at least in the sum- 
mer. Their holes are back in the high bank 
at the edge of the woods,. and are especially 
numerous where the river creeps in close to the 
upland ; but where it keeps its distance, they live 
at the heads of the ditches that drain the meadows, 
and at ebb-tide follow these down to the main 
stream, where they hunt for shell-fish until the 
returning tide drives them back. They also dig 
temporary holes in the banks at considerable 
distances from the upland, probably for use at 
periods of low-running tides. They appear to 
subsist almost entirely on shell-fish, at least I 
have never caught them feeding on any of the 
salt-water plants, and there is not much indication 
about their burrows of their browsing upon the 
fresh water and upland vegetation. Where they 
pass the winter, I am unable to determine. In 
the section with which I am most familiar, and 
which extends for a mile or more below fresh 

J 74 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

water, they nearly always disappear in November 
or earlier, and seldom put in an appearance again 
before April. And certainly the salt marshes, 
with their flood-tides and drifting ice-cakes, would 
make anything but desirable winter resorts for 
such ease-loving creatures as muskrats. On the 
whole, the most probable explanation seems to be 
that they spend the winter in the fresh waters, 
though if that were the case the number of musk- 
rats in the fresh-water streams and ponds would 
be materially increased, — in fact more than 
doubled if all those from the marshes stopped as 
soon as they found suitable conditions for spend- 
ing the winter. But it has always seemed to me 
that they were really least abundant in the fresh 
waters at just the time when they are absent from 
the salt meadows. In this latitude the ice above 
the muskrats' haunts commonly remains unbroken 
for three or four months at least. 

On the rivers the ice often breaks up during 
heavy rains late in the winter, and is swept sea- 

i7S 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

ward by the freshet, so that the muskrats see their 
protecting roof vanish in a single night, and are 
compelled to change their habits abruptly to suit 
the changed conditions. But on the smaller 
streams and ponds the change is much more 
gradual. The ice, by virtue of its smaller 
surface, is able to hold its own against the 
floods that sweep over it, permitting the musk- 
rats to continue their uneventful life below, until 
in March the sun begins to beat down more 
directly and for longer hours each day, and 
in protected places under the edge of the 
evergreens, and especially where the compara- 
tively warm water of spring brooks flows in, 
the ice slowly withdraws, revealing a narrow strip 
of clear brown water above unfrozen turf or sand, 
with water-cress and caddis-worms that somehow 
serve to make drifting snow and all its associa- 
tions fabulous and incredible. 

Rocks and tree- trunks that rise to the surface 
collect the heat and melt the ice about them, and 

176 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

to such places the muskrats resort with their 
roots and clams, to enjoy them in the open air. 
Sometimes when the snow is unusually deep in 
the early spring, and it is difficult even to guess 
at the whereabouts of w r ell-known streams, the 
warmth of the earth, prevented from radiating 
by the thick blanket of snow, raises the tempera- 
ture of the water so that the ice is melted from 
beneath. And at such times I have known 
whole reaches of a stream a rod or more in width 
to open unexpectedly, showing black smooth water 
between white banks, accomplishing in a few hours 
what I had supposed would require weeks at 
least. As a general thing, the muskrats content 
themselves with merely climbing to the edge, or 
occasionally striking off across the snow to the 
nearest open water or spring hole. But some- 
times when there is an inch or less of snow on 
the ice, they seem to be simultaneously possessed 
with a desire to run about on its surface ; and in 
a single night the snow will be covered with 

12 I77 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

their tracks, meandering about in a purposeless 
manner, as if they were only out for the air. 

The various openings broaden and extend 
their boundaries, and run together until the ice 
is reduced to a rapidly diminishing border along 
each bank. So long as the streams are kept full by 
the melting snow and the spring rains, the musk- 
rats are somewhat restricted in their choice of 
landing-places, and every projecting fence-rail 
and stump, or leaning willow-tree, is taken advan- 
tage of. As the water recedes, they resort to the 
tussocks, as fast as these are uncovered ; and when 
the stream is finally confined again to its original 
channel, they make their feeding-places beneath 
the roots of trees close to the water, or on pieces 
of driftwood still partly afloat, or in hollows in 
the bank, having wholly resumed their summer 
habits. They often travel for long distances 
under water, sticking their noses out from time 
to time, with a sneeze, for a new supply of air, 
which is obtained in considerably less than a 

178 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

second, so that at such times they are apt to be 
mistaken for fish rising for insects. A muskrat 
presents rather a curious appearance when swim- 
ming beneath the surface, the long over-hair 
being plastered thickly down over silky fur that 
is still dry and filled with air, which bulges out 
between the long hairs in the form of glistening 
bubbles. 

I recall some years when the ice melted in 
long spells of fair weather that would have passed 
for Indian summer a few months earlier, and when 
there was not enough rain or melting snow to 
fill the brooks, which constantly receded between 
tinkling shelves of ice that dripped continually 
like eaves in rainy weather ; and at such times, 
of course, the muskrats were compelled to adopt 
their summer ways almost before the ice vanished 
from their haunts. 

As is said to be the case with beavers, there 
are here and there muskrats that appear to take 
a dislike to the social habits of their race, and 

179 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

wander away by themselves, usually following 
the course of some little brook near the source 
of which they take up their lonely abode. One 
of these hermits made his burrow beneath a 
little bridge in our pasture one spring, and lived 
there for several months. I frequently saw him 
swimming up or down the brook, which, except 
immediately beneath the bridge, was only just 
big enough for his passage, so that. in order to 
turn round he was under the necessity of climbing 
out on the bank. When alarmed, he generally 
sank at once to the bottom, completely damming 
the stream, which rose and poured over him in 
a miniature cascade. In swimming down-stream 
he adjusted his speed to that of the current, and 
so was able to pass along with comparatively little 
disturbance ; but going in the opposite direction, 
he made a spectacle of himself sure to attract the 
attention of any one who might be near by. 

The excessive rainfall of the summer of 1898 
evidently deluded certain of the more inexperi- 

180 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

enced muskrats into establishing themselves 
about merely temporary ponds which are ordi- 
narily only damp hollows, and which must have 
frozen almost to the bottom with the first severe 
cold weather. Near the middle of one of these I 
found a newly-made cabin which appeared to be 
still inhabited when the shallow water surround- 
ing it became frozen over in November. It was 
in a little tussocky depression without any per- 
manent water-supply, and half a mile or more 
from any regular haunt of the muskrats, though 
forty or fifty rods away there was an isolated frog- 
pond, surrounded by cat-tails and rushes, where 
muskrats are occasionally to be found. 

The males evidently do a good deal of fighting 
among themselves in the early spring, each ap- 
parently endeavoring to lacerate the tail of his 
opponent as severely as possible, this member 
being the one most frequently injured, in most 
cases showing at least one ugly cut, and oftener 
three or four, of a pattern only to be made by 

181 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

the chisel-like teeth of a muskrat. They are 
also occasionally bitten on the back or shoulders, 
and less frequently about the head, evidently not 
being at all particular about having all their 
wounds in front. 

I have never had the opportunity of witnessing 
one of these combats, all the meetings that I have 
seen between them having been of a friendly 
nature. Last spring, for example, I was sitting on 
the side of a hill above a stream that wound around 
its base, when I saw two muskrats, a dozen rods 
apart, swimming towards each other, but each 
evidently wholly unaware of the other's presence 
on account of the windings of the stream. On 
meeting, they appeared to touch noses, and then 
one immediately turned about in the water and 
swam back down-stream, while the other landed 
on a tussock of grass with something in its teeth 
which it proceeded to devour, and which I felt 
certain it had received from the other. 

In swimming, the muskrat depends almost 

182 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

entirely on its hind- feet and muscular tail for 
propellers. The tail, which is almost as long as 
the body and head together, is flattened for the 
greater part of its length, measures an inch or 
more in width at the widest part, and is nearly 
naked. The hind-feet, although not truly webbed, 
are unusually large and peculiarly adapted for 
swimming, the toes being so arranged that when 
the foot is brought forward, they fall back one 
behind another so as to present but little resist- 
ance to the water ; but in kicking back the whole 
foot spreads out, and the spaces between the 
toes are closed up by close fringes of stiff hair 
which grow on the sides of each toe and spread 
out with the back stroke so as to form a most 
serviceable paddle. The forefeet are small and 
totally devoid of any swimming apparatus, and I 
think are usually held tucked up under the throat 
while swimming. I am not certain just how far 
the tail is made to serve as propeller, its true 
office evidently being that of rudder ; but it may 

183 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

often be seen wriggling vigorously from side to 
side, like that of a tadpole, as the animal swims 
past, and undoubtedly serves to increase the 
speed. 

In swimming on the surface, muskrats often 
hold the head and shoulders well out of water, 
and the rest of the body deeply submerged, 
except for the last half of the tail, which is held 
up behind several inches out of water and curved 
over in the form of a hook ; in turning, it is 
brought around strongly to one side like a 
rudder. They are perfectly capable of entering 
the water silently and quickly at the same time, 
and frequently do, though quite as often they go 
in with a sudden plunge and needless amount of 
noise which I am inclined to think is intended 
to warn the others. 

Although they are unquestionably fond of 
meat, I cannot recall having seen one attempt 
to catch any living animal larger than a clam, 
except on one occasion, and that attempt proved 

184 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

unsuccessful. It was on a summer afternoon after 
a shower. I was standing on the bank of a stream 
when a water-rail flew up from the reeds on the 
opposite bank, as if frightened suddenly, and fly- 
ing with trailing legs across the water, dropped 
into the grass on my side of the stream. Before 
it was fairly alighted, a muskrat plunged into the 
water near the place the rail had started from, 
and swimming across, pushed in among the grass 
where it had taken refuge, driving it again from 
its retreat; whereupon it flew back to its original 
position. But the muskrat still followed, and 
drove it back and forth several times before giv- 
ing up the pursuit and swimming off up-stream. 

On the other hand, I have seen muskrats let 
slip several opportunities for capturing birds of 
one kind or another. One frosty morning in 
April I was walking along the bank of Old River, 
— a quiet, sedgy stream, half swamp and half 
mill-pond, winding about and doubling back upon 
itself in the shadow of the evergreens, with sev- 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

eral smaller and equally crooked swampy brooks 
joining it here and there, each with its own par- 
ticular fog-bank at sunrise, — when through an 
opening in the pines I caught sight of a black 
duck, motionless on the water, staring, with out- 
stretched neck, at a large muskrat swimming past 
within a yard of him. The ripple caused by the 
muskrat surrounded the duck and spread beyond 
him ; but the bird's eyes were fixed on the little 
furry head as it glided along ; and when at last 
the muskrat touched the bottom and waded 
ashore to crouch on the wet bank and nibble at 
something it held between its paws, the duck, ap- 
parently convinced for the first time that it was 
only a musquash and not a mink at all, evinced 
considerable relief and straightway fell to feeding. 
At the next bend a muskrat was busily 
occupied with his breakfast. He first came 
ashore, towing a sweet flag which he had cut off 
close to the root. It was very amusing to see 
him eat it ; he began at the bottom, and, sitting 

186 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

up and gripping it firmly with his fore-paws, 
crowded it into his mouth and swallowed it faster 
than would seem possible for an animal of his 
size. 

A song sparrow came hopping along the bank 
towards him, and I wondered if it would try to 
catch it ; but the sparrow evidently did not re- 
gard him as a dangerous enemy, for it hopped 
fearlessly to within a foot of him, whereupon 
the musquash, having finished the tenderest 
portion of his flag, entered the water and paddled 
over to an old stump that stood a few yards 
from the bank, where he began nibbling at the 
willow shoots and young hardhack that grew 
there, but not finding it quite to his taste, came< 
back and, climbing up the steep bank to the foot 
of a cluster of young pines, fell to browsing on 
the leaves of wild rose-bushes and sweet-briers. 
He stood upon his hind-feet, bracing himself with 
his tail, and with his hand-like fore-paws passed 
the branch rapidly before his mouth, biting off 

187 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

the clusters of leafy buds as they came along. 
The birds were now giving warning upon all 
sides of a hawk in sight, and a large one at that ; 
but the muskrat, although now at a consider- 
able distance from the water, took no notice of 
the general outcry, and even when a crow sailed 
over with high-pitched, angry cawing, refused to 
look up from his meal, until at last, having ap- 
parently satisfied himself, he climbed down to 
the water and sculled away until hidden by a 
bend of the river. 

Further down, where the stream becomes 
narrow and deep, and the banks rise abruptly 
from the water without any fringe of rushes and 
• sedge, I saw another swimming along near the 
opposite bank. On coming to a tussock, he 
clambered to the top of it, and after snuffing 
about for a few seconds, carefully lowered him- 
self into the water again without a splash, to 
repeat the performance at the next tussock he 
reached ; then, cutting a half-circle out into mid- 
188 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

stream, he commenced diving in deep water, 
remaining several minutes beneath the surface 
each time, and usually coming up about a rod 
from where he went down. He dived with a 
peculiarly easy rolling motion, and his fur, which 
was in splendid condition, looked dry and glossy 
in the sunlight whenever it was out of water for 
an instant. He looked at me deliberately sev- 
eral times, but, in spite of the fact that I was 
walking about openly within fifteen yards of him, 
showed no alarm at my presence. Whatever he 
was diving for, he evidently was not very suc- 
cessful, and leaving him still at it I strolled on 
between the trunks of the pines. 

There is a bridge of rough stones across the 
mouth of Great Swamp Run, but the opening 
has become partly filled by falling stones and 
earth, and more water flows over it than beneath 
it. As I was crossing, I saw a muskrat crouch- 
ing in the grass on the shore of a little island 
eight or ten rods away. Presently he stretched 

189 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

himself and, sliding into the water, came swim- 
ming in my direction, evidently with the inten- 
tion of crossing over to the further bank of Old 
River. Nearer and nearer he came until within 
ten yards, when he turned about and started off, 
looking over his shoulder at me as he went ; 
but as I remained perfectly motionless he turned 
again and came swimming back and forth before 
me, sometimes hardly a dozen feet away. His 
fur was in poor condition ; there was a spot in 
the middle of his back where it was almost worn 
off, and here was a miniature pool of water, a 
tablespoonful perhaps, held in place by the longer 
fur and loose skin of his sides, rolling about like 
quicksilver with his every movement, but never 
spilling and always full whenever he came up 
from a dive. He soon began swimming in much 
smaller circles, as if trying to locate some particu- 
lar spot, and at last stopped and dived, perhaps 
hoping to pass beneath the bridge and so out into 
the river ; but presently he came up again on the 

190 



SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 

same side as before. He did this several times, 
but without success, though one would hardly sup- 
pose that he would have much difficulty in finding 
the opening if there really was any. Before diving 
he always stopped short and floated for an in- 
stant, perhaps to get his lungs well filled with 
air, and then doubling his head beneath him 
went down with a plunge. After the third dive 
he swam almost to my feet and, after looking at 
me steadily for a few seconds, turned abruptly 
and swam back to his island, first to a muskrat 
house that stood there partly hidden in a clump 
of alders, and then back to the spot where I first 
saw him. Here he landed and, facing about, 
stood looking in my direction as if waiting for my 
departure : so I took the hint and crossed over. 

When their homes are flooded by heavy rains, 
the muskrats may sometimes be seen abroad in 
great numbers, and at such times they show con- 
siderable cleverness in concealing themselves even 
in the most unpromising situations. ' One of their 

191 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

favourite tricks on scenting danger is to sink into 
the water and come up beneath a drifting mass 
of rubbish, sometimes the merest handful being 
made to serve. I am convinced that sometimes, 
when no other concealment offers, one will take 
a wisp of long grass in its teeth and, stemming 
the current with a fish-like movement of its tail, 
allow the loose ends of the grass to drag back 
over it for protection. They usually do this 
sort of thing close to the bank where the current 
is slowest ; on being disturbed they dive with a 
slight splash and reappear a few feet away in the 
same position, with only the slightest ripple to 
betray them. At other times, when the wind is 
blowing, you may see one floating on his stomach 
with his tail held stiffly up, perhaps an inch above 
; the surface of the water, evidently to serve the 
purpose of a sail ; they manage somehow to hold 
themselves at right angles to the direction of the 
wind, and make considerable headway without 
any visible exertion. 

192 




Q 
Ld 

-1 
H 
<r 
< 



Chapter VI 
Squirrels 

Red Squirrel 

THE red squirrel is eminently practical, for 
all his crazy antics and nonsense, which 
to the casual observer might appear to constitute 
his entire character. A more careful study of 
his ways will, I believe, convince any one that 
unlike the majority of wild creatures, he leaves 
nothing to chance, though quick to seize on any 
opportunity that offers to better his condition. 
The conspicuous white circles about his eyes 
always give him a rather anxious, startled ex- 
pression, and when suddenly alarmed he has the 
most affected way of sitting bolt upright and 
clutching tragically at his breast with one bony 
little hand, for all the world like some tragedy 
queen on the stage. I think he almost invariably 
presses his left hand to his left side, with claws 

i9S 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

spread well apart and the white fur puffing out 
between them. This movement is so habitual 
with the red squirrel that any one who cares to 
may see the performance by observing those he 
may happen to see in the woods or by the road- 
side. If they would only occasionally clap both 
hands to their breasts, it would make a much 
more attractive picture ; but this I have never 
seen them do. 

Like the blue jay, the red squirrel is always 
eager for excitement of any sort, but he has the 
advantage of not being compelled to wait for 
circumstances to furnish him with an excuse for 
getting up a racket. As a general thing, when 
the blue jays begin shrieking and scolding there 
is pretty sure to be something at the bottom of 
it, though it may not be of any great importance ; 
and for that matter I have no positive evidence 
that the red squirrel ever creates a disturbance 
without having some object or other to shower his 
anger upon. But he has a way of choosing such 

196 



SQUIRRELS 

utterly harmless and inoffensive victims, and of 
keeping so safely out of sight without so much as 
a chirrup to betray him when any actual danger 
threatens, that it is hard to believe that he is ever 
more than half in earnest. I have never known 
him to take part in the general outcry against a 
hawk or owl, although he must encounter the 
latter frequently as he rambles about among the 
evergreens, their favourite roosting-places, and 
would certainly have every excuse for resentment 
against them ; but in such cases he probably con- 
siders his own safety as of the first importance, 
and makes a point of retiring as expeditiously as 
possible. But let him catch a glimpse of an un- 
offending partridge quietly gathering berries or 
scratching among the pine-needles, and he im- 
mediately pretends to fall into an utterly uncon- 
trollable rage. He slowly approaches the bird 
with short, scratchy starts, down the tree-trunk, 
keeping on the opposite side as much as possible, 
and peering out from behind the rough bark and 

197 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

protecting branches, as if fully aware of his 
danger and determined on not exposing himself 
more than necessary, and ever and anon retreating, 
panic-stricken, back into the shadow, to renew 
the attack from an opposite direction, barking 
huskily. Should you approach and flush the 
bird in his direction, he appears to be thrown 
into a perfect paroxysm of terror by the whir 
and rattle of its wings, and vanishes with hysteri- 
cal chatterings, followed by low murmuring growls 
from his hiding-place. 

It is wholly out of the question to suppose for 
a moment that he can have any cause for resent- 
ment against the grouse family; and yet, so uni- 
versal is this habit of scolding and threatening 
them on every occasion that I find I have gradu- 
ally fallen into the way, when shooting grouse, 
of allowing the squirrels to point out my game 
for me to a certain extent, after the manner of 
trained pointers, finding that three times out of 
four I can tell from the way they chatter whether 

198 



SOUIRRELS 

or not it is a grouse that excites them at the 
time. On one occasion, one of them even helped 
me to secure a wounded bird as cleverly as a 
retriever could have done, although probably 
from a different motive. I had made a snap shot 
through the hemlocks, and heard the grouse 
come to the ground fluttering, but on reaching 
the spot I found only a few scattered feathers and 
just the faintest possible track on the dry pine- 
needles, which I lost completely after following 
for a few rods. As I stood there looking for 
some clue to guide me, a red squirrel began chat- 
tering excitedly a few rods away, hurrying along 
from tree to tree, and finally coming to a halt, still 
scolding. Thinking it just possible that he had 
his eye on my game, I approached, and found 
him waltzing madly about among the lower 
branches of a pine and glaring fiercely down 
into the shadows of a tangled mass of fallen 
tree-trunks and branches. I moved cautiously 
along beside the windfall, and presently noticed 

199 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

a place where the spider's web had been parted 
beside the prostrate bole of a large maple, and 
reaching in beneath it, drew forth the unfortu- 
nate partridge, merely wing tipped, but com- 
pletely disabled for flying. 

The red squirrel has been generally accused of 
being an inveterate robber of birds' nests, and 
I am afraid there is a good deal of ground for 
the accusation ; still, I have never observed him 
in the act of plundering a nest, nor do the small 
birds generally exhibit any great amount of alarm 
or anxiety at his presence in the proximity of 
their homes. In the spring, however, I have 
seen one persistently chasing pine finches and 
red polls about the top of a gray birch and put- 
ting all his agility into play in his endeavours to 
catch them, creeping towards them cautiously 
and cat-like and springing out suddenly when he 
fancied himself near enough ; but the birds always 
slipped away just in time to save themselves, and 
although the squirrel persisted in his attempts as 

200 



SQUIRRELS 

long as there were any birds in the tree, I could 
not help feeling all the time that he really had no 
idea of succeeding and kept it up only for the 
fun of the thing, as a kitten hunts dead leaves in 
the wind. But there is no doubt that these 
squirrels are extremely fond of raw meat of any 
kind, with a decided preference for the flesh of 
birds ; and to an animal possessing such tastes, no 
more tempting repast could be imagined than a 
nest full of tender fledgelings. Every nest in 
the woods, high or low, is easily within his reach, 
and, this being the case, the wonder is that there 
are enough birds to go round each season. For 
in the evergreen woods at least there seem to be 
almost as many squirrels as birds' nests, and 
every orchard and hard-wood grove is inhabited 
by them to a certain extent. I once noticed one 
fast asleep curled up comfortably in a robin's 
nest, which appeared to fit him as exactly as if 
made to order and furnished the nicest kind of a 
cradle. At first I supposed that he must have 

20I 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

robbed the nest of its contents and was sleeping 
off the effects of overeating, but on routing him 
out and examining the nest I found it to be 
an abandoned one of the preceding year, and the 
squirrel innocent, at least of that particular crime. 
Occasionally you will see one clinging to the 
bark of some dead pine or hemlock, and listening, 
woodpecker-like, to the sounds made by the 
insects at work beneath the surface. When he 
has succeeded in locating his prey, he tears off 
the loose bark with his teeth in great ragged 
pieces, and presently pounces upon and drags 
forth a flattened white grub an inch or more in 
length, which he devours with great apparent 
relish. He appears to subsist, however, mainly 
on a vegetable diet, not only fruit, nuts, and 
berries, but seeds of maples and other trees ; and 
he probably knows of other seeds growing about 
the woods and swamps, and their various times 
of ripening. He is a veritable epicure as regards 
mushrooms, and appears to have some infallible 

202 



SQUIRRELS 

rule for distinguishing the edible from the poison- 
ous varieties; for he recklessly lunches on those 
doubtful kinds usually avoided by the amateur, 
the white amanita and some of the pink and 
scarlet russulas, for example ; and I have never 
known him to suffer from such indulgence. But 
the principal harvest consists of the seeds of the 
different evergreens ; and - although these vary 
greatly in abundance from year to year, there is 
generally a sufficient supply of one kind or 
another. The white pine is usually rather spar- 
ing in its yield ; but once in every ten or fifteen 
years, perhaps oftener, nearly every tree in *the 
forest bears enormously, even the younger ones 
showing scattered clusters here and there, while 
those that have stood for generations present a 
roughened, shaggy aspect from the thickly 
crowded cones at their summits. At such times 
the red squirrels seem determined to gather every 
cone before it opens and scatters its seeds to the 

winds. 

205 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

They begin work late in July, while the cones 
are still green and solid with the milky seeds 
embedded near the centre and hard to distin- 
guish when the cone is cut open. In the hot 
July sunshine they hurry about their work, cut- 
ting off the cones and tossing them over their 
shoulders well out beyond the surrounding 
branches to the ground. Whenever the cone or 
the twig that supports it is cut or scarred, a drop 
of glistening, transparent sap oozes forth, turning 
on exposure to the air to the most tenacious kind 
of pitch ; and it is truly wonderful that the 
squirrels can manage to keep themselves so clean 
while engaged in their harvesting. But the 
majority of them show hardly a trace of pitch any- 
where about their persons, though now and then 
you will run across one with little wisps of fur 
stuck together, especially about his face and neck 
and in the longer hairs of his tail, evidently having 
been particularly unfortunate or careless in his 
work. Every little while they descend to the 

206 



SQUIRRELS 

ground to bury the cones they have cut off, two 
or three in a place, covered with pine-needles to 
the depth of several inches. Probably they have 
learned by experience just how early it is safe to 
commence gathering them in order that the seeds 
may ripen properly ; but it is hard to imagine 
how those that are buried early can possibly 
escape moulding, especially if it should chance 
to be a wet season. Perhaps, as in the case of 
cheese, the flavour is really improved by moulding. 
At all events, it would seem that the squirrels 
consider a certain amount of moisture necessary 
to make the seed palatable, for they never appear 
to store them in hollow trees as they do nuts and 
apples, though one would suppose they might 
save themselves a great deal of extra labour by 
packing them away on end in some such dry and 
well ventilated cavity, where the cones would 
open of their own accord without putting the 
squirrels to the necessity of gnawing off each 
scale separately. All through the late summer 

207 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

and fall they keep steadily at work, as long 
as there are cones to be had by climbing, even 
after a majority of them have parted with their 
seeds. 

In the winter, even when the snow is several 
feet deep, the squirrels never appear to have any 
difficulty about locating their stores, sinking per- 
pendicular shafts down through the drifts in 
order to reach them. Often, instead of burrowing 
down repeatedly to each little pile of cones, they 
dig radiating tunnels along the surface of the 
ground, from the first one opened to the others 
near it, dragging the cones laboriously along their 
winding galleries to the surface and away over 
the snow to some favourite stump before attempt- 
ing to open them. To get at the seeds they 
hold the cone upright in their paws and, begin- 
ning at the stem end, bite off the scales at the 
junction with the core, laying bare two seeds for 
each scale removed. Long practice has made 
them experts in the art, and it is surprising to 

208 



SQUIRRELS 

see how rapidly they manage it. The fragments 
of cones cast aside collect about the stump until 
it is fairly covered up and buried from sight; and 
these mounds of little reddish brown chips are to 
be seen scattered about the woods at frequent 
intervals, indicating by their presence the com- 
parative abundance of squirrels. 

They eat also the seeds of the pitch pine and 
spruce ; but I am inclined to think that they pre- 
fer those of the white pine when these are to be 
obtained. The little cones of the hemlock retain 
their seeds all winter ; so, after the harvesting of 
the pine cones is over for the season, the squirrels 
turn their attention to these. On still winter days 
you may see them springing about among the 
elastic branches, clinging to the very tips of the 
finely divided sprays at a perilous height in their 
endeavours to reach the cones that are hung on 
such exasperatingly slender twigs, hardly large 
enough even for a squirrel's foot to grasp ; and 
not infrequently a misstep will send one of them 

211 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

headlong down towards the earth, usually to save 
himself by catching hold of one branch or another 
on the way down. If there should chance to be 
no branches beneath him, he spreads himself out, 
like a flying squirrel, as he falls, to a remarkable 
degree of flatness and strikes so lightly as to 
escape all injury, even on hard snow crust or ice, 
and scampers away up the tree again without 
losing so much as a moment of the time he evi- 
dently considers so precious. They usually open 
the hemlock cones as fast as they gather them, 
eating the diminutive seeds, hardly larger than a 
pin's head, at once allowing the scales to fall as 
they will ; and as you stand beneath looking up, 
these come floating and twinkling down between 
the branches like snowflakes on a clear day. 

The red squirrel's winter home varies accord- 
ing to circumstances. Sometimes it is a compli- 
cated burrow beneath a stump, with several apart- 
ments and winding galleries ; sometimes a hollow 
branch or woodpecker's hole ; while in the ever- 

212 



SQUIRRELS 

green woods he constructs a nest nearly as in- 
genious as the more celebrated one of the beaver. 

When convenient, he chooses the nest of some 
large bird for a foundation, and in this builds a 
structure of moss, bark, pine-needles, and dead 
leaves, with walls several inches in thickness, and 
a soft nest of dry grass and feathers inside. The 
bark used is of two sorts, the rough outer bark 
of different trees, broken into small pieces, and 
what appears to be the inner bark of the red 
cedar, torn into narrow strips or ribbons to bind 
the whole together. It is put together with 
remarkable solidity, and usually freezes hard 
early in the winter, furnishing a thorough defence 
against the cold or any other enemy from with- 
out. The narrow opening at one side is provided 
with a hanging curtain of moss or some similar 
substance, easily pushed aside by the inmates, 
but immediately falling back into place and 
effectually concealing the entrance. 

If unable to find a bird's nest situated to their 
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

taste, the squirrels arrange a loose platform or 
framework of twigs in a convenient crotch, and 
build their nest on that. There is also a con- 
siderable range in the quality of workmanship dis- 
played, in some instances the material being 
apparently thrown together in the most hap-haz- 
ard manner imaginable and even when newly built 
with an effect of general dilapidation, the work 
perhaps of young and inexperienced builders. 

The young squirrels are occasionally born and 
reared in these nests, although a hollow tree is 
usually chosen for a nursery, often merely a low 
stump, two or three feet high, with the hollow 
open at the top to all the rains of the season. The 
interior is filled with a lot of fine dead grass and 
soft lichens for a bed, which at first thought 
might be expected to become completely satu- 
rated in every shower or rainstorm. But as I now 
recall the different nests that I have found so sit- 
uated, I have a strong impression that all of them 
were sheltered by the overhanging branches of 

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SQUIRRELS 

dense hemlock or spruce trees, capable of turning 
aside the water as effectually as a thatched roof. 
The young squirrels are most absurd looking 
little beasts at first, like miniature pug dogs, blind 
and naked, and with enormous heads. In a few 
days their fur begins to show like the down on a 
peach, and as a fringe of short hair along each side 
of the tail, which at length assumes something of 
the flattened aspect of that worn by their elders, 
but without displaying much of the fluffy, 
shadowy quality of the ideal squirrel tail until 
late in the following autumn. The fur, from the 
very first, is so close and dense as to give them the 
typical red colour of their species, although still so 
short as to be barely perceptible to the touch, giv- 
ing them a brilliant, newly painted appearance, like 
toy squirrels covered with some bright coloured 
satiny cloth to catch the eyes of children. Al- 
though they do not remain long in the nest, they 
are seldom seen abroad until fully grown, or very 
nearly so, at least, which is rather remarkable when 

2I 5 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

you come to consider the number that are brought 
up each summer in every pine grove or thicket 
where these squirrels are abundant. Occasionally 
you may see a family of them playing timidly 
about among the branches, but without display- 
ing any of the self-confident recklessness of their 
eiders, quick to take alarm at the slightest hint of 
danger and skurry back into concealment, appar- 
ently possessing less courage than either the 
chipmunks or gray squirrels of a similar age. 

In March the red squirrels tap the maple-trees 
for their sap, by gnawing through the bark on 
the upper sides of horizontal branches. The 
little cavities so made quickly fill to overflowing, 
and, stretched at ease, the squirrels regale them- 
selves to their satisfaction. They also drink the 
sap that flows from such branches as have been 
broken or cracked by ice or snow during the pre- 
ceding winter. But their lives are far too busy 
to allow them to spend their entire time in this 
manner, and during their absence the sap is apt 

216 



SOUIRRELS 

to form into icicles, which, when the temperature 
of the wind and other conditions are favourable, 
may be constantly evaporating and gathering new 
material at the same time, so that the sugar con- 
tained in the sap finally collects in rich, honey- 
coloured drops of syrup at the extremity of the 
icicle, possessing an even more refined and deli- 
cious flavour than that obtained by the more 
violent process of boiling. The squirrels appear 
perfectly capable of appreciating this fact, and are 
pretty certain to be on hand to gather it before it 
drops, although often obliged to exert themselves 
to their utmost in order to reach it. They have 
also learned to take advantage of the downward 
flow of sap in the autumn ; but at that season most 
of them are so busy with their harvesting that they 
can hardly spare much time to it; at all events, 
they do not collect it then as in the spring. 

In April they turn their attention to the open- 
ing blossoms of the elms, and you may see them 
hanging to the extremity of the slender twigs, 

219 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

nibbling away eagerly at what must prove at best 
very unsubstantial food. Their position among 
the slender and still leafless branches is one that 
renders them conspicuous for a considerable dis- 
tance ; yet few persons seeing them so occupied 
would recognise them for what they really are, 
for from that commanding outlook they are 
quickly aware of the approach of any one, and, 
instead of attempting to retreat to the larger 
branches of the tree for safety, remain motionless 
wherever they may happen to be. I have fre- 
quently seen several of them scattered about in 
the same tree top, without mistrusting at first that 
these inanimate looking objects were really alive; 
for they have a way of assuming such unnatural and 
grotesque positions at these times that I really 
believe they intentionally pose as old birds' nests or 
the remnant of some last season's caterpillar tent. 
After a little while, if they fancy they are not 
especially observed, they will usually return to 
their repast, swinging themselves from place to 

220 



SQUIRRELS 

place, at first in a cautious, stealthy manner, with 
an eye for possible danger. 

The red squirrel's diet seems to include pretty 
nearly everything that is ever eaten by any of 
our native animals. I have known them to find 
their way into the pantry of a farmhouse, and 
sample everything available, appearing to be par- 
ticularly well pleased with the custards. In the 
winter, they are sure to be among the first arrivals 
when the fox or goshawk makes a successful 
hunt, ready to dispute with the crow and the 
blue jay for whatever is left after the feast; and 
in summer they often add grasshoppers and other 
insects to their menu. But in spite of it all, and 
the fact that they never appear to exhaust the 
stores of provisions they lay up in the fall, they 
are invariably lean, without so much as the 
slightest particle of real fat to be found in any 
part of their anatomy. 

From my own observations I am inclined to 
give them credit for being far superior to the gray 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

squirrel in intelligence, in spite of their crazy 
manner and lack of self-control. Commonly the 
tamest and most familiar animal in the woods, if 
much hunted they acquire in a very short time a 
cautiousness only excelled by most creatures after 
years of constant-persecution. Thus their general 
abundance is hardly to be wondered at, especially 
when one considers that they are probably about 
the healthiest creatures in existence. I have 
never known an instance of their having been 
afflicted by any of the diseases common among 
other rodents. 

That the red squirrel is an excellent swimmer 
is beyond dispute, but for my own part I cannot 
recall ever having seen him enter the water vol- 
untarily. One autumn afternoon, however, I 
was sitting high up on the wooded bank of a 
little stream when one came racing along the 
opposite shore, close down to the edge of the 
water, making the dry leaves rustle with a loud- 
ness out of all proportion to his size. The dead 

222 



SQUIRRELS 

leaves extended without a break half-way across 
the stream, and in another instant the squirrel was 
fairly afloat among them. Without showing 
much alarm at his predicament, however, he 
turned, and swimming in a half circle, as easily 
as a mink, with just the^ top of his head and 
a narrow strip along his back and tail in sight, 
landed a few yards further down, when for the 
first time his unfitness for that sort of thing be- 
came apparent. A mink or muskrat on emerg- 
ing from the water gives himself a shake and in 
a very few minutes is as dry and furry as ever. 
But this particular squirrel was literally wet to 
the skin, and the more he shook himself the 
worse he looked, for while here and there a tuft 
of fur attempted to resume its former position, 
by far the larger part of it remained flattened close 
to his hide, the effect of which his pitiful little 
shred of a tail only heightened as he scrambled 
over the water-soaked roots and up the trunk of 
an ash-tree, where, seated on a projecting knot, 

223 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

he endeavoured to put himself into better 
shape. 

Occasionally, in the late fall or early winter, 
there are days when the red squirrels are to be 
seen everywhere running about over the ground in- 
stead of among the branches, both in the woods and 
in the open. I am inclined to think that such days 
are usually followed by rain, though whether or not 
the movement has anything to do with the desire 
for migration which from time to time seizes upon 
most of our wild animals, is hard to determine. 

Like most northern animals, the red squirrel 
is rather lighter coloured in winter than in sum- 
mer, though hardly enough to render him less 
conspicuous on the snow. As cold weather 
comes on he changes from a strong reddish brown 
slightly grizzled with black to a soft grayish fawn 
colour possessing a most decided shade of green 
on the sides and flanks, and with a broad stripe 
of intensely fine light red down the back. The 
black stripe dividing the dark fur above from the 

224 



SQUIRRELS 

white below, which is often so conspicuous in 
summer, is usually entirely absent in the winter, 
when, perhaps owing to the greater length of the 
fur, the line of demarcation is much less distinct 
and regular. The colour of the tail is practically 
the same at all seasons. I have often wondered 
what use the long hairs springing from the wrists 
of these squirrels could possibly be to their 
owners. These slender, whisker-like hairs, often 
an inch and a half or more in length, surround 
the wrist in a kind of whorl, and may, perhaps, 
give the squirrel timely notice when his foot 
comes within grasping distance of an object, as he 
leaps madly about among the branches with his 
eyes on other things. 

The red squirrel is apparently affected less by 
changes of temperature than the other members 
of his tribe, for he may often be seen hard at 
work in the hottest weather, and again out on the 
snow crust at sunrise in the extreme depth of a 
cold wave. And when, as so often happens, the 
15 225 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

latter is followed by a sudden thaw, with thick 
white fog-banks lurking under the evergreens, 
while the snow sinks beneath the slopping rain 
and everything is nasty and uncomfortable, the 
indomitable red squirrels are pretty certain to be 
out everywhere, not only in the woods but along 
every roadside fence and stone wall, especially 
where certain neglected apple trees still hold out 
an inducement in the shape of frozen apples 
softened again for the first time in months. 

The red squirrel is decidedly a northern 
species, hardly to be considered native south of 
the latitude of New York, but ranging towards 
the pole as far as the woods extend. Unlike the 
European squirrel, however, which it so closely 
resembles in many ways, its fur, even in the most 
northern latitudes, though thick, soft, and of 
very presentable length, never appears to attain 
that peculiar and indescribable quality demanded 
by furriers, a circumstance for which the red 
squirrel should be duly thankful. 

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Chapter VII 

More Squirrels 

Gray Squirrel — Flying Squirrel 

THE gray squirrel is apparently much more 
sensitive to weather conditions than his red 
cousin, and regulates his movements more in 
accordance with the season, coming out in sum- 
mer early in the morning and spending the 
greater part of the day in concealment, to 
appear again for a few hours late in the 
afternoon. As the weather grows cooler in 
the autumn, he rises later in the morning and 
curtails his midday nap, so that after the first 
of November, or thereabouts, the best time 
to find him abroad is between ten o'clock and 
noon. 

Of course this applies only in a general way. 
Wild animals are not to be bound down to fixed 
rules, but come and go pretty much as they 

229 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

please ; and individual tastes differ among them 
as among men. 

In my immediate vicinity the hard woods are 
restricted to certain comparatively limited groves 
and thickets, and the gray squirrels are of course 
naturally confined to these, although here and 
there is a family reared in the evergreen woods, 
subsisting probably on berries and mushrooms 
and seeds of one kind and another. But in the 
autumn they move to the hard woods, to the 
hickories by preference, and when these fail to 
yield a crop, to the white oaks or chestnuts or 
beeches, according to the year ; for none of these 
trees can be depended upon to bear each season, 
and the gray squirrel population drifts about 
from one locality to another, assembling in con- 
siderable numbers wherever food is most abun- 
dant, collecting all the nuts that are to be had 
and storing them beneath stumps and in hollow 
trees by the bushel. These stores they live upon 
until they are finally exhausted, when they move 

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MORE SOUIRRELS 

on again ; unless the same trees should continue 
bearing for successive years, in which case the 
squirrels are likely to settle down indefinitely or 
until a short crop starts them off again. As a 
wet summer is thought to blight the blossoms of 
the hickory, but to have an opposite effect on 
the chestnut and, I think, the acorn crop, one 
may to a certain extent judge from the character 
of the summer where to look for gray squirrels 
in the following autumn. Where the various 
kinds of nut-bearing trees are associated about 
equally in the same forest, I am inclined to think 
that certain families of squirrels establish them- 
selves and occupy the same hollow trees for 
generations, the only movement being the occa- 
sional influx from less favourable districts, and the 
departure of the younger ones when the colony 
is threatened with overcrowding. 

The vast migrations which formerly gave this 
species the name of migratory squirrel, seem 
now to be restricted to the unimportant wander- 

231 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

ings above referred to, but when the country was 
newly settled they were of not infrequent occur- 
rence, and compared favourably in magnitude with 
the well-known swarming of lemmings across 
northern Europe. 

The red squirrel is popularly supposed to 
drive away the gray variety, and probably does 
to a certain extent, for he is pretty sure to attack 
the other on sight and generally comes out ahead, 
although an actual hand-to-hand tussle is of rare 
occurrence, the encounter generally consisting of 
ill-natured bickerings at a distance of ten inches 
or more, terminating in the retreat of the larger 
of the two combatants. I have been told, how- 
ever, that when the gray squirrel is fairly cor- 
nered, he usually succeeds in putting the other to 
flight, and at all events I have never known the 
red squirrels to succeed in actually clearing any 
grove, no matter how small, of the enemy, al- 
though often outnumbering them three to one. 

The gray squirrel's home, as already mentioned, 

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MORE SQUIRRELS 

is commonly a hollow tree or branch, some partic- 
ularly capacious interiors harbouring a dozen or 
more individuals at certain seasons, and, strangely 
enough, without any very noticeable quarrels, al- 
though the old males are apt to be unpleasantly 
ugly and tyrannical. They also construct arbo- 
real nests like those of the red squirrel, only 
smaller as compared with the size of the builder, 
composed of broad leaves cut off while still green 
in the late summer, half a dozen in a bunch 
adhering to the twig they grew upon. These 
are placed in successive layers on a slight plat- 
form of twigs in such a manner as to shed water 
satisfactorily enough, but without leaving much 
space inside, even for a single inmate. 

I watched the construction of one of these 
nests for nearly the whole of a hot afternoon. 
The squirrel, a big dark-coloured fellow with 
a splendid brush, kept hurrying out to the ends 
of the branches to clip off twigs, a quarter of an 
inch in diameter, apparently with a single stroke 

2 33 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

of his incisors, and then back to his nest with the 
fan-like cluster of leaves waving above his head. 
In spite of the squirrel's general distaste for hot 
weather, this one worked uninterruptedly for 
hours in a temperature of something like eighty 
or eighty-five degrees in the shade, with not 
another of his kind to be seen or heard in the 
vicinity. Judging from what I saw at the time, I 
concluded that the leaves were merely arranged 
in a solid mass, and that the chamber was formed 
afterwards by the squirrel forcing his way into 
the centre from one side, and without any 
attempt at a lining whatever. In this vicinity 
they are usually placed in beeches and made of 
leaves from the same tree, whether the beech- 
trees happen to be bearing that year or not. 
Although of such frequent occurrence, I cannot 
learn that they are used with any degree of regu- 
larity. I remember that when gunning with other 
boys it was the custom, when nothing better 
offered, to fire at these nests whenever they 

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MORE SOUIRRELS 

looked promising, but they invariably proved to 
be uninhabited at the time, although we tried it 
at all seasons and at all hours of the day. On 
one occasion, however, I found a nest that con- 
tained inmates. It was a little before noon, of a 
cold brilliant windy day about the first of Janu- 
ary. I had jamm'ed a shell of number four shot 
in my gun and was unable to extract it. Wishing 
to substitute a smaller size, I fired at the nearest 
squirrel's nest, and was surprised at the rumpus 
that followed my shot. After a few seconds a 
gray squirrel backed out of the entrance, ran 
along the branch for a few yards, and dropped 
dead into the snow. I climbed to the nest and 
found another squirrel inside, which, I think, es- 
caped uninjured. 

The barking of the gray squirrel is a decidedly 
striking sound, audible in calm weather for an 
eighth of a mile or more, and usually expressive 
of anger, alarm, and warning. It consists first of 
a succession of flat, rasping quacks, finally drawn 

2 35 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

out and prolonged to a kind of whining snarl, ris- 
ing at times so as to approach the screaming of a 
hawk in quality. It is heard oftenest directly 
after rain, when several of them may often be 
heard answering each other from different parts 
of the forest. 

I have seen them at different seasons running 
about at the edge of the salt water, at a consider- 
able distance from the woods, apparently for 
the sake of tasting the salt. I am convinced 
that most of our wild animals have the same 
habit when the salt water is accessible, for I have 
seen a woodchuck leave the woods, go down to 
the edge of a salt pool left by the tide, and for 
several seconds lap eagerly at the whitish scum 
formed by the evaporation of the water. 

Gray squirrels are frequently tamed, and are said 
to make most intelligent and entertaining pets, 
although rather too much inclined to insist upon 
having their own way about things. When not 
confined in a cage their tricks are pretty certain to 

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MORE SOUIRRELS 

prevent the lives of their owners from becoming 
flat and monotonous. One of the most amus- 
ing cases that has come to my knowledge 
recently, is that of a squirrel which persisted in 
hiding the nuts that were given him in a little 
girl's hair, and continued bringing them and 
tucking them away out of sight as long as she 
would sit still for him to do so. 

The gray squirrel is not much seen during the 
summer months, but in August one will begin to 
see the young ones, rather more than half grown, 
going about in pairs, or even three and four 
together, especially late in the afternoon as the 
sun gets low, or when the air has been cooled by 
a shower. They are seldom accompanied by 
their parents, and have evidently learned to shift 
for themselves, gathering whatever of fruit or 
berries the forest has to offer and eating it on the 
spot, without attempting to put by any surplus 
for future use. But when the summer is over, 
and the nuts begin to ripen, they follow the ex- 

2 37 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

ample of their elders, and after the first severe 
frost of autumn they make the stiff leaves of the 
nut trees fairly crash as they leap from branch to 
branch, in the hurry of their harvesting. Down 
below, the ferns droop and blacken in the open 
places in the woods, the scent of frost-killed 
vegetation hangs like incense on the still air, and 
the bees seek out the banks of goldenrod and 
asters for the last honey of the season. 

Of all the inhabitants of the forest, the squirrels, 
both red and gray, appear to be the least suscep- 
tible to the doom of autumn, the vague, unrea- 
soning sadness and sense of looking backward 
which pervades everything and gives the same 
meaning to the notes of migrating birds, the 
cricket's creaking, the sound of the wind in the 
pines, or the surf beneath the sand-dunes. But 
although to all outward appearances the fall is 
the squirrel's favourite season, it is also their time 
of greatest danger, for the red-tailed and the red- 
shouldered hawks are on their migrations, and the 

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MORE SQUIRRELS 

hours that they habitually choose to spend in 
hunting correspond exactly with the squirrel's 
working hours, from seven to ten o'clock in the 
morning and from three o'clock in the afternoon 
until near sunset. They watch cat-like for an 
opportunity to take some unhappy squirrel un- 
awares, or, circling above the tree tops, their keen 
eyes penetrate the foliage from constantly vary- 
ing positions, searching branch and bole and the 
carpet of fallen leaves beneath, till, perceiving the 
flicker of a bushy tail, the long wings close, of a 
sudden, fan-like, and the hunter goes down with 
a rush to match his quickness against the quick- 
ness of a squirrel. Or the still more treacherous 
goshawk and cooper's hawk, with their shorter 
wings and slender yacht-like build, shoot along 
with baffling swiftness through the undergrowth 
just in order to surprise the busy harvesters at 
their work. 

When the nuts are all gathered or fallen, the 
gray squirrel spends most of his time indoors, 

2 39 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

coming out in the warmest weather to enjoy the 
sunshine and rake over the dead leaves for scat- 
tered nuts and acorns, or to transfer some of his 
hidden treasures to the home-tree. And in the 
winter he oftens allows whole weeks to slip by 
without so much as having poked his head out of 
his doorway, his favourite time for taking the air 
being on still sunny mornings after a snowstorm, 
the least breath of wind often serving to drive 
him back to his quarters again. Occasionally, 
however, you will see him out defying the 
cold when the north wind is fashioning snow- 
drifts along the fences. But for all that he is no 
true northerner, and one is hardly surprised to 
learn that New Hampshire is about his northern 
limit. 

These northern gray squirrels of ours, true to 
the general rule, are larger and grayer than those 
farther south. The brown stripe along the back, a 
distinguishing feature of the typical gray squirrel, 
is inconspicuous or wholly wanting. The black 

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MORE SQUIRRELS 

variety, formerly the most abundant in the West 
and South and even now not uncommon in many 
districts, as far as I can learn is practically un- 
known in New England. I have occasionally 
seen specimens that looked quite black in the 
distance, but the darkest of those that I have had 
the opportunity of examining close at hand 
proved to be merely very dark gray above and 
the colour of rusty iron beneath, with an unusual 
amount of grizzly black about the tail. 

The black squirrels appear to have steadily 
diminished in numbers since the country was 
first settled, and no wonder, for they must find 
concealment difficult at all times and doubly so 
in the winter, — though possibly in regions 
where forest fires are of frequent occurrence the 
blackened wood may serve to render them some- 
what less conspicuous. But under almost any 
circumstances, one would suppose that the gray 
squirrel would have the advantage when it came 
to a question of hiding from enemies, and it is 

243 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

rather surprising that the black ones managed to 
hold their own so well against the Indians and 
hawks for untold generations. In the primeval 
forest, however, hiding must have been a com- 
paratively easy matter, and perhaps the blackness 
of their fur served them in good stead in ways 
we know not of. For, if we can believe the 
scientists, the mere instance of a majority of 
squirrels thinking black fur more beautiful than 
gray, and so being attracted by it in the mating 
season, would alone be enough to offset a long 
list of dangers. 

I have sometimes wondered just what law of 
ownership exists among squirrels regarding their 
hidden stores : if they really possess any sense 
of honour in the matter, or whether, as on the 
whole seems more probable, each has to depend 
on his skill at hiding and defending his treasures 
against all comers. 

And when a squirrel is killed, how long a time, 
I wonder, is likely to elapse before his stores are 

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MORE SQUIRRELS 

discovered and appropriated by other squirrels or 
by mice ? 

The number of the gray squirrels is reduced 
each year much more rapidly than is the case with 
the red ones. I doubt if more than one half of 
them live to see the first snowstorm.. And the 
possessions which they leave, in the shape of nuts 
and acorns, must help materially in furnishing the 
survivors with food at just the time of the year 
when it is most needed, although in all likelihood 
by far the larger part of them falls into the hands 
of the red squirrels, whose ranks are never notice- 
ably thinned and who are wide-awake and abroad 
at all times and seasons. 

It might very naturally be supposed that the 
habits of so curious and remarkable an animal as 
the flying squirrel would have received more than 
usual attention, yet, in spite of its abundance and 
familiarity, there would seem to be less known 
concerning its ways and manner of getting a liv- 
ing than concerning those of almost any of our 

2 45 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

wild animals, and for my own part I am almost 
beginning to despair of ever finding out anything 
more on the subject. 

From what little I have seen, I should class 
them as creatures of singularly erratic habits, 
sometimes dwelling alone in hollow stumps close 
to the ground, or else high up in some deserted 
crow's nest, and again congregating in communi- 
ties of twenty or thirty in the hollow trunk of a 
decaying sapling only a few inches in diameter 
and scarcely large enough to accommodate them. 
Farther south we frequently hear of their taking 
up their quarters in the walls of a farmhouse, after 
the manner of mice, but no instance of the sort 
has ever come under my immediate notice, nor 
can I now recall ever having read of anything of 
the kind taking place in this part of the country. 
Here they appear to keep themselves to the 
thickest parts of the woods, and I have found 
them most abundant in places removed at least a 
mile from any dwelling. My father has told me 

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MORE SQUIRRELS 

that thirty or forty years ago a colony of them 
inhabited a hollow linden, one of a scattered 
group of half a dozen trees standing in the open 
pasture several hundred yards from any woods. 
The old tree is still standing, but, as far as 1 
know, it has not harboured a flying squirrel for at 
least a dozen years. 

The last opportunity I had for observing flying 
squirrels occurred five or six years since. As I 
was tramping through some high rocky woods, I 
noticed what looked like a newly made wood- 
pecker's hole near the top of a small dead ash, 
and attempted to climb to it. The tree proved 
to be pretty thoroughly rotten, and swayed about 
a good deal with my movements. By the time I 
was half-way to the top, a little round head was 
poked out of a hole above me, and soon after a 
flying squirrel emerged and scrambled round to 
the other side. He was followed by another, and 
this one by still another, until half a dozen or 
more had made their appearance and clung 

249 



LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

motionless about the loose bark, none of them 
apparently looking at me, but straight before him 
in whatever direction he happened to be facing, 
as if his thoughts were of other things. One that 
was almost within reach of my hand seemed to be 
quite blind, for the centre of each eye showed a 
perfectly opaque white spot like the eye of a 
blind horse. But he appeared as well able to 
take care of himself as were any of the others, 
although if I remember rightly he refused to 
leave the tree and finally crept back into the hole 
from which he had emerged. The others sailed 
off one by one to other trees or to the ground, 
along which they ran like chipmunks. 

All the flying squirrels I have ever seen under 
like conditions have behaved in this manner, 
apparently acting wholly upon instinct and with- 
out displaying the slightest symptom of intelli- 
gence ; but for all that, there are no more attrac- 
tive or winning creatures in the woods. They 
never exhibit any marked symptoms of fear, but 

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just cuddle up on a knot or projecting piece of 
bark only a few feet away, looking as if they 
would like nothing better than to be taken in the 
hand and petted. 

I remember hearing my grandmother tell how 
one winter evening she was sitting before the fire, 
when my grandfather came home from the woods 
and taking off his coat threw it across a chair near 
the fireplace. Presently a flying squirrel crawled 
out of one of the pockets, sailed across the room 
to where she sat, and nestled contentedly in her 
hair, which she wore in a great fluffy mass piled 
high above her head. I cannot recall the sequel 
of the story, which was undoubtedly interesting, 
at all events to those chiefly concerned in it. 
No one ever knew exactly how the squirrel came 
to be in the coat, but it was supposed that a 
family of them must have been disturbed by the 
choppers in the wood-lot and that this one had 
taken refuge in my grandfather's pocket, probably 
bereft of what little wit it ever had by the noise 

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

of chopping and the crash of falling trees, and 
glad to find any retreat away from so rude a 
world. Perhaps it was only half awakened from 
its winter's sleep, and dozed off again as soon as it 
found itself finally ensconced in the depths of the 
pocket, to be aroused later by the heat of the fire. 
I cannot help wondering what finally became of 
it, and just how much of an impression the ad- 
venture made upon its sleepy little brain, or 
whether it took it all as a matter of course, to be 
forgotten as soon as it was fairly back in the 
trees again. Perhaps I have run across some 
of its descendants in the woods or caught them in 
box-traps without mistrusting that their ancestor 
and mine had once been on such very intimate 
terms. 

I have never at any time seen a flying squirrel 
abroad in the day time of its own free-will, even 
in the darkest weather, and should not hesitate to 
class it as wholly nocturnal in its habits, although, 
when routed out in the daylight and compelled 

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to fly, it seems able to distinguish pretty clearly 
objects several rods away. Its eyes are unusually 
large and prominent and perfectly black, and its 
fur is of much the same quality as chinchilla, 
and of even softer tints. The flying mem- 
brane consists of a thin strip of skin stretched 
between the fore and hind legs and furred above 
and below 7 . A slight cartilaginous support runs 
back from the wrist, assisting to extend the mem- 
brane when the fore legs are spread apart as in 
flying. The tail probably serves both as para- 
chute and rudder, since it is thin and flat but of 
such a close, silky texture as to catch the wind 
like a sail. 

I am not even sure just what the track of fly- 
ing squirrels looks like, though I frequently run 
across a track which I suppose to belong to 
them, as I know of no other animal that could 
very well make it. But if it really is a flying 
squirrel track, then they are in the habit of being 
out on the snow in mid-winter much more fre- 

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

quently than is generally supposed, for I as 
often find them freshly made after a long spell of 
zero weather as during a thaw. This track may 
be best described as in size and appearance in- 
termediate between that of the red squirrel and 
white-footed mouse, occasionally showing the 
footprints spread well apart laterally, as might 
be expected of a flying squirrel. The creature 
that makes them, whatever it is, appears to 
ramble about the woods and swamps pretty much 
at random, climbing low bushes here and there 
for seeds or frozen berries of one kind and 
another, which are generally eaten as soon as they 
are gathered. But if these really are flying 
squirrel tracks, then in one way they indicate a 
certain degree of intelligence which I had hardly 
supposed them to possess, for they never lead 
me directly to the home tree, usually terminating 
at the foot of some tree or sapling quite devoid 
of any cavity or nest. 

I should imagine that from their nocturnal 

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habits these squirrels would fall frequent victims 
to the different kinds of owls, although I cannot 
recall ever having found any evidence of this hav- 
ing been the case, either about the nests or in 
the stomachs of such owls as I have examined. 
But in all probability they are frequently 
snapped up by them, as well as by foxes, weasels, 
and the like, just as they are occasionally by 
domestic cats. 

Oddly enough, one rather frequent cause of 
their destruction is the barbed-wire fence, the 
sharp points of which catch the loose skin of 
their parachute as they sail along. In their 
struggles to free themselves, the unfortunate 
squirrels simply twist themselves up tighter and 
tighter, and in all probability die from suffocation. 
I have found four or five of these unhappy vic- 
tims suspended in this way, and I have no doubt 
from their positions that that they perished in 
the manner described. I have also seen a fox, 
a skunk, and several cats caught on wire fences 
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

in the same way. The fox was undoubtedly 
caught while attempting to jump through, but 
the others may possibly have been shot and 
hung there by their destroyers. 

The colour of the flying squirrel is a pale 
blue-gray, more or less washed at the surface 
with buff or fawn colour, or clouded with dusky. 
From what little I have been able to gather, I 
should say that the fawn colour is most in evi- 
dence in southern specimens, which also appear 
to be the smallest, while the northern ones, those 
taken here in New Hampshire, for example, are 
larger and darker than the type, as if approach- 
ing the Canadian form, which in turn approaches 
more nearly to the European species ; as if, as is 
believed to have been the case with so many of 
our wild animals, the first pioneers came across 
from Asia by way of Behring Strait to spread 
southward and eastward through the Canadian 
woods, and southward along the mountain 
regions, at last down across the United States ; 

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while another branch pushed westward along 
the northern border of the European forests 
across Siberia and northern Russia to Finland 
and Poland, but apparently without penetrating 
southward anywhere as they have in this country. 
In Asia there are said to be a dozen or more 
distinct species, but these two, the European and 
American, appear to be the only ones that have 
strayed beyond its borders. I have sometimes 
been tempted to believe that the Canadian 
variety is occasionally found much farther south 
than is commonly supposed to be the case, even 
to southern New Hampshire, as I have obtained 
one or two specimens that corresponded very 
closely to that type both in size and colour. 
Half a dozen years ago or more, moreover, a 
local gunner told me'that he had found a family 
of flying-squirrels in a hollow willow-tree in this 
town, and that he had been particularly struck 
by their large size and dark colour and the fact 
that each of them had a very noticeable broad 

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 

black band along the side. I should not have put 
much credence in his tale if his description had 
not applied so closely to the northern variety, 
which it was hard to imagine that he could ever 
have heard of. 

It is now several years since I have seen a live 
flying squirrel, though there is no reason to sup- 
pose that they are any less abundant than formerly. 
I have rapped on hollow trees and pried into de- 
caying logs and stumps on every occasion without 
discovering the sleepy little chaps I was in search 
of. But this sort of thing goes largely by chance 
after all, and to-morrow I may happen on them 
where I least expect it. I remember once climb- 
ing to a crow's nest in a tall pine while the old 
birds wheeled and scolded overhead. When rather 
more than half-way to the top, I reached the place 
that I had seen from the ground, but was disap- 
pointed to find only a last year's nest heaped up 
with dry leaves and pine-needles in such a way 
as to show that it had already been appropriated 

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by squirrels. On investigation, I founds instead 
of red squirrels as I had expected, four or five 
little flying squirrels about half-grown. I only 
saw them for a few seconds at most, as they 
scrambled away in all directions and disappeared 
completely. But in those few seconds I became 
aware that young flying squirrels are simply the 
most delightful things in existence. And I still 
look forward to the time when I shall discover 
another family of them, without the slightest fear 
of being disenchanted. 




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